UN hails Rwandan disengagement plan

The UN Special Envoy for the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kamel Morjane, on Tuesday cautiously welcomed a Rwandan disengagement proposal that involves pulling back 200 km on all its fronts in the DRC, to enable UN observers to be deployed. “We will certainly be having talks with the other parties about this arrangement because the UN will certainly need the means to do this and lots of cooperation from all the parties in order to monitor this zone,” he told Radio France Internationale. The Rwandan proposal, according to military experts, would create a huge corridor from Dekese in central DRC to Moba on the eastern shores of Lake Tanganyika. Rwandan officials say they back the entire Lusaka agreement and the UN deployment in the DRC. “Our intentions are very clear,” Rwandan presidential adviser on the Great Lakes region, Patrick Mazimhaka, told IRIN. “We want a negotiated settlement to the Congo problem for the good of the whole region. That is the basis of our proposal which we think is the most reasonable thing to do.” The Lusaka peace accord calls for the disengagement of warring parties and making room for a UN force that would eventually oversee the orderly withdrawal of foreign troops.