Lusaka cannot be revised or amended - Tshisekedi

Political opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi of the Union pour la Democratie et le Progres Social (UPDS) on Saturday welcomed the planned UN deployment of military observers and peacekeeping troops in the DRC as "a glimmer of hope" for the country. He told Radio France Internationale he particularly welcomed that the deployment should take place in the context of the Lusaka peace agreement, and said that "with the UN already morally committed", any problems that arose once the troops were in place could be dealt with.

Tshisekedi said he could not gauge the adequacy of the proposed 3,000-strong peacekeeping force because he did not know the magnitude of their mission, but he was glad the UN was sending them at all. As for the Lusaka accords, "they cannot be renegotiated, revised or amended," he said. "It is exactly in the form in which they were signed that they must solve the Congolese problem ... Revising or amending them is out of the question," Tshisekedi told Radio France Internationale in an interview.

The intended deployment of UN peacekeepers in the DRC was on Friday the subject of a briefing by the General Commissioner for MONUC affairs, Leonard Twaremba Onfre, for officials in charge of diplomatic and foreign affairs, and of defence and security. The meeting was aimed at working out "a harmonised strategy for the deployment of the UN troops", DRC state television reported.