Inter-Congolese dialogue gets under way

Amid accusations of attempts to scupper the talks, the long-awaited inter-Congolese dialogue (ICD) opened on Monday afternoon with all of the important players present in Sun City, South Africa. Despite threats last week from Jean-Pierre Bemba's Mouvement pour la liberation du Congo (MLC), stating that the group would not attend due to biased representation among the unarmed opposition groups, MLC representatives arrived on Monday morning, SAPA confirmed. Representatives from the other armed rebel group, the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD), were also present, SAPA reported. "Everybody who is anybody seems to have turned up," SAPA quoted the South African foreign affairs spokesman, Dumisani Rasheleng, as saying on Monday. On the eve of the peace talks, however, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) Foreign Minister Leonard She Okitundu accused troops from RCD, backed by more than three battalions from Rwanda, of attacking government positions on 22 February at Moliro, a town on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. "This act was clearly perpetrated with the aim of sabotaging the inter-Congolese dialogue," AP quoted him as saying. Okitundu added that government forces had pushed back the attackers to the nearby town of Kamamba, the agency reported. There was no independent confirmation of the attack, and the leader of RCD-Goma, Adolphe Onusumba, had denied the accusations, the BBC reported. Both sides were accusing each other of trying to scupper the talks, it said. The ICD talks, due to last 45 days, aim to bring all sides to the Congolese conflict together to chart a peaceful transition to democracy by laying down the groundwork for political structures and a multiparty system in the DRC. The ICD is the central pillar to the Lusaka peace agreement signed in 1999. Organisers of the talks said that foreign belligerents in the DRC - namely Rwanda and Uganda - had not been invited to the talks and would have no official observer status if they sent representatives, Reuters reported. South African and the European Union states are footing the expected bill of US $4 million for the gathering, at which 320 delegates are expected, Reuters said.