Dialogue facilitator urges complete withdrawal

Facilitator of the planned inter-Congolese dialogue, Ketumile Masire, on Wednesday called for an urgent summit of countries involved in the DRC conflict to agree to withdraw their armies, Reuters reported on Thursday. At a news conference during the OAU summit in Lusaka, Zambia, Masire said that little progress could be achieved in national all-party talks on the country’s political future until it was free of foreign troops. “The presidents should urgently meet and work out a strategy of withdrawal so that there is no suspicion that if one group leaves, perhaps the others will then refuse,” Reuters quoted Masire as saying. Masire said the problem of disarming and demobilising a variety of militias active in the DRC would also be discussed during the inter-Congolese dialogue. “I think that the area of responsibility to which I am charged cannot make progress until foreign armies leave the Congo,” he stated, according to Reuters. He praised DRC President Joseph Kabila’s efforts to end the conflict but suggested that some of the rebel groups were dragging their feet and delaying the peace process, Reuters reported. The armies of Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia are in the DRC backing the Kabila government against an eastern DRC-based rebellion that has the backing of Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda.