Pool may be excluded from 2007 polls, offical says

Voters in the Pool region in southern Republic of Congo may not be able to participate in the 2007 legislative elections because the former rebel group there is still armed and dangerous, a senior Congolese official has said. "The former [rebel] Ninjas combatants have kept their arms, which is seriously compromising the free movement of goods and people," said Marius Mouambenga, the head of a committee created in 2003 to follow the peace process following the end of the country's civil war. He was speaking at a news conference on Saturday in the capital, Brazzaville, during an occasion to mark the three-year anniversary of the peace agreement, signed between the government and the head of the Ninjas, Frédéric Bitsangou, alias Pasteur Ntoumi. The Ninjas are also known as the Conseil national de la résistance. "Delays and misunderstanding are blocking the government from organising elections before the end of the year or even in 2007," he said. Since the 2003 peace agreement, the Pool region has been in a limbo - neither at war nor at peace. The government accuses Bitsangou of failing to hand in weapons he collected from his combatants in 2005; Bitsangou accuses the government of not meeting its commitments of defining his political status in the country. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called on both sides to work together to ensure the elections take place as scheduled in 2007 and fairly. "If the elections are organised transparently, every one must respect the results," Annan told Congolese officials during a visit to the country from 19 to 21 March. In the last elections in 2002, voting took place in only six of the 14 constituencies in Pool region. Currently, only 129 parliamentarians sit in the National Assembly rather than the total number of 137.