In a letter seen yesterday by AFP, the speaker Olivier Kamitatu asked the eight hardliners, who have been replaced in the assembly by their own Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), to take up seats they quit on July 13.
"They are in my view parliamentary deputies above all," Kamitatu said in the letter. "They have a mandate, they should exercise it as long as their case has not been submitted to a plenary session of the assembly. We need everybody."
Led by Bizima Kahara, the group on July 12 boycotted the opening of a new session of the parliament, which is part of a political process aimed at restoring peace and democracy to the vast central African country.
The following day, the eight issued a statement from one of the main eastern towns, Goma, saying they were suspending parliamentary participation in protest at a deployment of government troops in the east of DRC after clashes in June.
The leadership of the former rebel group, which has been a political party since April 2003, then gave the renegades five days to resume their duties in the assembly, and replaced them when they failed to do so.
Kamitatu, however, said the men should return to Kinshasa "to take part in the passing of highly sensitive laws", by which he meant legislation on nationality and citizenship, a draft constitution and an amnesty.
The RCD has for a year been part of a transitional government headed by President Joseph Kabila and has 94 of the 500 seats in the national assembly set up to pave the way, next year, for the first democratic elections.
When the eight men renounced their parliamentary duties and also demanded a special congress of the party to reconsider its role in the post-war political transition, they openly split fractious RCD ranks.
Kamitatu wrote, nevertheless, that both the constitution and the rules governing the conduct of parliamentary business were clear and that deputies should complete their mandates.
"You can't on the one hand want to pass laws and on the other ignore the rules that govern our business," he wrote. "We're in a country ruled by law, and the texts have to be respected, even if they are constraining, even if they are disagreeable. The law is the law and we must respect it."
The DRC war, estimated to have claimed more than 2,5-million lives either in combat or through starvation and disease, ended with a peace accord in 2002 which was gradually and laboriously supplemented by further agreements and implemented last year. – Sapa-AFP.
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