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Pres
ident Joseph Kabila was set yesterday, 43 years to the day
since the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) won independence from
Belgium, to name a transitional government to lead his country out
of a war that has killed millions.
The final obstacle to nominating the new government was removed
Sunday, when the former warring parties resolved the issue of
control of the army.
"I sincerely hope this is the end of the war," Kabila said after
the deal was signed by his government, the main rebel groups and
their respective allies in the mineral-rich but impoverished former
Zaire.
The deal gave the main rebel group, the Congolese Rally for
Democracy (RCD), control over ground forces, with rival rebel
group, the Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC), commanding the
navy.
The interim government, which sources said Kabila was due to
announce imminently, was provided for under a peace pact signed in
December to end more than four years of war in the DRC, a country
the size of western Europe.
The conflict, which began in 1998 when Rwanda and Uganda invaded to
support rebels seeking to oust the government in Kinshasa, drew in
a dozen African nations at its height and killed some 2,5-million
people, either in combat or through disease and hunger.
It was fuelled by the DRC's huge mineral wealth, with all parties
using the chaos to plunder the country of its natural
resources.
A peace pact, which provides for the transitional government to be
set up, came into force in April this year, but unrest has
continued in the northeastern Ituri and Kivu regions, where
hundreds have died in recent months in various conflicts between
ethnic militias and rebel groups.
A French-led European Union peacekeeping force has been deployed to
stop further bloodshed in Bunia, the main city in the Ituri
region.
Diplomats in the capital Kinshasa were confident the overall peace
deal would stick.
"I hope that this accord and the establishment of a transitional
government will mean that a lasting peace has come to Congo," said
Moustapha Niasse, the former Senegalese prime minister who mediated
the negotiations.
US President George W Bush last week joined calls for the
belligerents in DRC to set up the transitional government by
yesterday, when the country clebrates its anniversary of
independence from Belgium in 1960.
Under the peace deal, Kabila, who assumed power after the
assassination of his father Laurent in January 2001, will share
power with four vice presidents.
One will come from each of the two main rebel movements, one from
the government and one from the political opposition.
Ministries will be divided up between the different parties to the
government, and former rebel fighters will be integrated into the
army and police force.
Elections are due to be held within 24 months of the investiture of
the transitional government, but that period may be extended.
The elections would be only the second that the DRC, ruled from
1965 to 1997 by the staggeringly corrupt Mobutu Sese Seko, has held
since independence. - Sapa-AFP.
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