Uncertainty before Sun City talks

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said the resumption of the inter-Congolese dialogue (ICD) in South Africa on 25 February presents a "unique opportunity" for the Congolese parties to engage in "substantive political discussion" and agree on a "new political dispensation" in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Annan urged all the Congolese parties to the dialogue, invited by the facilitator of the talks, Botswana former President Ketumile Masire, to attend the meeting and to participate in its proceedings in a "constructive spirit". The plea closely follows the announcement on Tuesday by the leader of the Mouvement pour la liberation du Congo (MLC), Jean-Pierre Bemba, that he would not take part in the Sun City talks, claiming that among the 20 opposition parties which had been accepted by the facilitator, "several are bogus opposition groups and allies of President Joseph Kabila". In an interview with Radio France Internationale on Wednesday, Bemba said his refusal to participate was neither a boycott nor a blockade of the talks. "In contrast, what we want to avoid is the outbreak of a civil war if bad decisions are made in the dialogue." "All we want is respect for the definition of a credible and recognised opposition, according to the Lusaka accords. I do not want any confusion between politicians and the political opposition. The opposition is usually opposed to a government," he said. Meanwhile, in an interview on Radio Botswana on Thursday, Masire said that since the suspension of the talks in Addis Ababa in October 2001, his office had been working on a mechanism to settle outstanding issues such as the wide inclusive participation of the Congolese people at the dialogue. He said accusations that he was not inclusive of all people were ironical as all groups were given an opportunity to choose among themselves who would represent them. Asked why part of the opposition and Bemba’s MLC were protesting, saying that two-thirds of the personalities in the opposition group were close to the Kinshasa government, Masire’s assistant, Hacen Ould Lebatt, said on Radio France Internationale that each group entitled to an additional quota of representatives had been granted "total freedom to go ahead and do its own distribution". "The facilitation – and the facts can prove this, as well as the concerned people themselves, since they included that in the minutes of their meeting – including the government, the Congolese Liberation Movement, the Congolese Rally for Democracy , even the group of opposition leaders who were present in Gaborone, cannot deny that those opposition leaders actually belong to the opposition," said Lebatt. Asked what the facilitation could do to end the deadlock, he replied: "All I can say is that we are available and open to envisage with them all that could please them and limit their objections. There is no doubt in my mind that we will succeed." The principal groups to be represented at the talks in Sun City are the Kinshasa government, the unarmed opposition, the Uganda-backed MLC, the Rwanda-backed RCD and civil society. Despite having no central leadership structure, authority or homogeneity, six seats have been reserved for the indigenous fighters known as the Mayi-Mayi, which fall within the civil society or "forces vives" category. Broadly speaking, the term Mayi-Mayi is applied to armed groups of traditional militias fighting on the side of the Kinshasa government. The composition of the Mayi-Mayi representatives has, however, raised some eyebrows inasmuch as the six Mayi-Mayi delegates have been chosen by Kabila’s government, the RCD and the MLC. "If you give the government and the RCD the mandate to chose the Mayi-Mayi representatives, whereas all other groups [just] chose their own delegates, you cannot expect genuine Mayi-Mayi leaders to be happy. You can only expect more violence," AFP quoted Francois Grignon of the International Crisis Group as saying. "All the protagonists, including Kinshasa, have tried to appropriate and take advantage of the Mayi-Mayi representation," he said. "Whatever happens, there will be no peace in eastern DRC without the Mayi-Mayi," he added.