Uganda vows to withdraw troops, Zimbabwe may follow

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has told the United Nations that he plans to "immediately withdraw" his troops from the northwestern city of Gbadolite and the northeastern city of Beni in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the UN mission in the DRC reported on Wednesday. However, an unspecified number of troops would remain in the northeastern city of Bunia, following recent confrontations among rebel forces, ethnic militias, and the Ugandan army, resulting in the deaths of over 100 civilians, as well as on the slopes of the Ruwenzori mountains, until the DRC government took full control of those areas. During a meeting on Tuesday with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Special Representative to the DRC Amos Namanga Ngongi, Museveni expressed willingness to engage in further dialogue with DRC President Joseph Kabila in order to resolve remaining tensions between the two countries. Museveni also called upon MONUC, as the UN mission in DRC is known, to increase the numbers of its soldiers stationed in Bunia. However, Ngongi told Museveni that even with a greater number of soldiers, MONUC could not ensure the protection of civilians. Speaking at a news conference in the DRC capital, Kinshasa, on Wednesday, Ngongi's spokesman, Hamadoun Toure, told reporters that Ugandan forces had divided Bunia into sections so as to better organise patrols of the city, and that Uganda would continue to ensure the security of Bunia "for the time being". During his visit to Uganda, Ngongi also met Foreign Minister Wapakhabulo, Defence Minister Amama Mbabazi, and the Ugandan-backed DRC rebel leaders, Roger Lumbala of the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie-National and Jean-Pierre Bemba of the Mouvement de liberation du Congo. Meanwhile, negotiations between delegations from Ugandan and DRC aimed at normalising relations continued on Thursday, under the auspices of Angolan authorities in that nation's capital, Luanda. In a related development, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe recently stated that he would explore the possibility of removing his nation's estimated 3,000 troops remaining in the DRC. "We are now going to work on the problem of withdrawing all our forces from the Democratic Republic of Congo," Mugabe said on Tuesday, during a public address to mark Defence Forces' Day.