Demilitarisation of Kisangani hotly contested

The DRC government has urged the UN Security Council to act against Rwanda and Uganda for failing to withdraw troops in line with a peace pact, AFP reported Wednesday. The DRC government “notes with alarm...a reinforcement of Rwandan military positions around the city Kisangani,” AFP quoted a DRC government statement as saying. Kinshasa wants its UN representative to ask the Council to “take the necessary coercive measures against Uganda and Rwanda which have violated the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of the DRC to force them to withdraw their troops from Congolese territory without further delay,” AFP reported. Last week, the UN Security Council repeated a call for the rebels to leave the town.

The statement also alleged that the Rwandan-backed rebel Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD) had “reportedly declared that it wants to move its headquarters from Goma to Kisangani,” and to have called on the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC) to deploy forces in Kisangani itself “to assure the complete demilitarisation of the DRC’s eastern border to remove any pretext of insecurity” used by Uganda and Rwanda, AFP reported. In Kinshasa on Wednesday, the DRC and its allies convened an urgent meeting “to conceive a common reaction to the attitude” of the RCD and the MLC “with respect to the relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council, namely, resolutions 1304 and 1355, which require the demilitarisation of the town of Kisangani,” Congolese RTNC TV reported.