UN Security Council team in Kisangani

The UN Security Council delegation arrived on Wednesday in the troubled city of Kisangani in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as part of its week-long mission to encourage peace efforts in the Great Lakes region.

Several Security Council resolutions have called on the Rwandan-backed Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) armed opposition movement to withdraw its forces from the DRC's third-largest city, where clashes with Ugandan forces in 1999 and 2000 resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths.

Ambassador Jean-David Levitte of France, who is leading the delegation, told reporters in Kisangani that a push for the total demilitarisation of the city would be high on the Council's agenda.

Levitte also emphasised the importance of reopening the DRC's vast riverine network to free navigation, a matter on which all warring parties have consented in theory. "We will give a strong push to the resumption of commercial traffic in all of Congo. What's important is the resumption of normal life for thousands and thousands of ordinary people," Levitte was quoted by Reuters as saying.

On Monday, a convoy of four barges transporting a cargo of more than 1,000 mt of humanitarian supplies left the DRC capital, Kinshasa, bound for Kisangani. The 1,700-km journey upriver will take three weeks to complete. The convoy, escorted by the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC (known by its French acronym MONUC), will make stops in the northern towns of Bumba, Lisala and Isangi, where some 25 percent of its cargo will be delivered. The remaining 75 percent will be discharged in Kisangani.

The supplies will consist of medicines, medical equipment, fuel, food, school supplies, construction material, cooking utensils, clothes, seeds and tools, and even bicycles. The convoy will return to Kinshasa with 500 mt of food and clothes from areas "far enough from Kisangani so as not to destabilise the local market", the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) noted.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday morning, the UN delegation met DRC President Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa for two hours of discussions. In the afternoon, the team held meetings with representatives of civil society, political parties, religious leaders and with MONUC and other UN agencies.

Levitte told reporters on Wednesday that Kabila had said he remained willing to pursue negotiations on power-sharing in the DRC. "President Kabila told us that the door of dialogue is wide open," Levitte said, according to Reuters.

An agreement reached at the inter-Congolese dialogue in Sun City, South Africa, was approved by some 80 percent of delegates to the conference. Under the accord, Kabila will remain as president during a transitional period leading to elections, while Jean-Pierre Bemba, leader of the Mouvement de liberation du Congo (MLC) will serve as prime minister. However, the refusal of RCD-Goma to sign the deal has raised concerns over a possible return to violence.

Levitte said the Council's message to all parties remained the same: "Think about peace in the region, think about ways and means to push the peace process, because people in the region long for peace," UN News reported him as saying.

The managing director of the IMF, Horst Koehler, told a news conference in Kinshasa on Tuesday that his organisation could increase its cooperation with the DRC if the peace process continued to move in the right direction.