Gloomy prospects for peace this year - EIU

“There is little prospect of a conclusive end to the conflict in the DRC” in the next 12 months, with indications being that many of the combatants find prolonging the war preferable to peace, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has gloomily predicted in a series of reports on the prospects for 2000. “Under such conditions, the prospects for a successful UN peacekeeping operation are less than auspicious,” it stated. Nonetheless, the report added, the Lusaka peace process had exposed the weaknesses of the various parties, such that it was more likely they would “begin to move towards gradual disengagement.”

On the one side, differences between Uganda and Rwanda - which the EIU described as the main threat to DRC President Laurent-Desire Kabila’s government - had weakened their alliance and “Uganda, in particular, may wish to limit its involvement in the DRC, where it has fewer interests,” the EIU suggested. On the government side, the capacity of Kabila’s main foreign backers to sustain their involvement has peaked, it added. Zimbabwe’s involvement in DRC had bankrupted it and both Angola and Namibia were increasingly concentrating on domestic security concerns, the EIU said. Given those weary allies and “a hostile domestic population among whom it no longer has real legitimacy or support,” Kinshasa would “continue to drag its hells on implementation of the peace process, including political liberalisation, which it correctly perceives is a direct threat to its own survival,” the EIU predicted.