Gov't pledges to support regional peace efforts

The government of the Central African Republic (CAR) has pledged support for the success of the UN Great Lakes conference on peace and security due to convene in Tanzania in November, Ibrahima Fall, the UN secretary-general's special representative for the Great Lakes Region, said on Monday. Accompanied by Lamine Cisse, the Representative of the Secretary-General and head of the UN Peace-building Office in the CAR, Fall was addressing reporters shortly after holding talks with the CAR leader, Francois Bozize, in the capital, Bangui. Fall said the CAR's involvement in the conference was due to its geographical and geopolitical relationship with the Great Lakes countries. The conference, he said, would discuss issues of security and peace; good governance and democracy; economic development; and the regional social and humanitarian situation. "All the four issues concern directly the Central African Republic," he said. Fall arrived in Bangui on Sunday on a two-day mission, during which he also met Foreign Minister Charles Wenezoui, National Transitional Council Speaker Nicolas Tiangaye, Prime Minister Celestin Gaombalet and Vice-President Abel Goumba. Since the early 1990s, the CAR has been affected by wars in the Great Lakes region by virtue of its proximity to the region's other countries. The CAR accordingly became host to thousands of refugees from Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda. Wars in these countries contributed to the proliferation of illegal arms, which, together with the CAR's own rebellions, has enabled thieves to steal weapons from military barracks, thereby enabling them to engage in armed robberies. During the CAR's insurrection, thousands of its citizens fled to the DRC and other neighbouring countries until mid-2003. The conflicts in the CAR, which were initially internal, became regional, in that fighters of the former DRC rebel movement, the Mouvement de liberation du Congo, entered the CAR in November 2001 and in October 2002 to aid former President Ange-Felix Patasse. Bozize overthrew Patasse on 15 March 2003. Following Bozize's six-month rebellion and its impact on more than two million of the CAR's 3.5 million people, the UN system in the CAR launched a US $9.1-million flash appeal in April 2003 and another of $16.8 million in November within the UN's consolidated appeals. The two appeals received almost no response from donors.