DRC, Rwanda and Uganda agree on armed groups' disarmament

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Uganda have agreed to disarm groups operating in their territories within a year as a way to pacify the region and attend to an issue that has been source of disagreements between the three countries. At a tripartite meeting held on Wednesday in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, and mediated by the US government, the three countries also agreed to establish a permanent commission to implement the disarmament process that was agreed upon in a 1999 agreement that was meant to end a war in the DRC as well as to address fears of neighbouring countries. "We have all committed ourselves to disarm all the fighting groups," Charles Murigande, Rwanda's foreign minister, told reporters after the tripartite meeting. Murigande and Uganda's defence minister, Amama Mbabazi, said the groups included former Rwandan militias, known as Interahamwe, who have been blamed for most of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, in which some 937,000 people died, according to Rwandan government figures. "The three countries agreed to significant confidence-building measures, specifically to establish a tripartite joint commission to implement existing agreements," representatives of the three countries said in a statement issued at the end of the meeting. They added: "The three countries committed themselves to the urgent task of beginning immediately the disarmament, demobilisation, reintegration and resettlement of the armed rebel groups and militias in the region." They said the commission would be established "with a view to achieving significant results within six months and completion of such efforts within a twelve-month target." Uganda's defence minister, Mbabazi, DRC's foreign minister, Raymond Ramazani Baya, and Cindy Courville, the US National Security Council senior director for Africa, attended the meeting. Baya said the Kinshasa government was committed to solving the problem "very soon". He added: "Problems of logistics had hindered progress on the issue, but with assistance from the international community the issue will be solved." Mbabazi told reporters that Burundi had been invited to the meeting as an observer since it was a major player in the peace effort in the region. He also condemned the recent massacre of 160 Congolese Tutsi refugees at a camp in Burundi. A Burundian rebel group claimed responsibility for the massacre but various sources have claimed Interahamwe and Congolese militias were also involved. The officials also called for "careful coordination and cooperation to deal with the tragedy, and reaffirmed commitment to promote peace and stability in the region and respect for the sovereign territory of the regional states." Courville said the US role in the talks was to help the countries develop the will to work together. "We will follow their lead," she said. Uganda and Rwanda deployed thousands of troops in the DRC in the 1990s initially to protect their borders from attacks by dissidents who were operating from eastern Congo, but the armies of both countries ended up fighting alongside Congolese rebels who were seeking to overthrow the DRC President Laurent Desire Kabila. Kabila was later assassinated and his son, Joseph, took power. The DRC conflict drew in half a dozen armies from the region as Kabila senior enlisted the support of Angola, Chad Namibia and Zimbabwe. Most of the foreign troops left the DRC following the signing of a ceasefire agreement in 1999 in Lusaka, Zambia, which called for the disarmament, demobilisation, reintegration and resettlement of armed groups that threatened the security of the countries neighbouring the DRC. Although most the foreign troops withdrawal ended in 2002, fighting between Congolese rebels, militias and other armed groups has continued since then, mostly in eastern DRC.