"The work of the transitional government has up to now not been particularly impressive. We asked for more efficiency, not only from the government but from the transition institutions including the two houses of parliament," said Aldo Ajello, the EU's envoy to the Great Lakes Region.
He was speaking on the margins of the African Union summit which wound up in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa yesterday.
Ajello said the transitional institutions had to be strengthened and that the authorities must "avoid leaving in place parallel institutions, which end up creating an unhealthy atmosphere."
"That said, the transition and the government of national unity remain the fixed point of reference for the European Union and our support for these institutions is absolute," he added.
The DRC is struggling to recover from a war that began in 1998 and grew into what has been called Africa's world war, drawing in half a dozen other African states at its height and claiming an estimated 2,5-million lives.
Ajello said the transition institutions must be handed real power and that it was especially important to build the necessary confidence among the various people involved in the transition process.
He also said there were groups in the capital Kinshasa and in the east of the country that are trying to bypass the recognised institutions and make their own policies.
"In the east, one section of the RDC (Congolese Rally for Democracy), a former rebel group now integrated into the transitional process, continues to act as if it was a separate body and intended controlling its own territory," he said.
"That must stop. The country must be unified as quickly as possible," he said.
There has been a flurry of diplomatic activity in recent days to try to calm simmering tensions between DRC and Rwanda, who are old enemies.
Rwanda twice invaded DRC, in 1996 and 1998, on the grounds that Rwandan rebels, who are blamed for much of the killing in Rwanda's 1994 genocide, posed a threat to the Tutsi-led government in Kigali.
Concerning the alleged participation of Rwanda in a dissident group within the Congolese army that briefly occupied the eastern town of Bukavu in early June, he said, "We have no proof of that, neither that Rwanda was there, nor that it was not there."
The uprising, which culminated in the week-long takeover of Bukavu, prompted widespread fears that another war might erupt in the region.
Rwanda recently closed its frontier in protest at DRC claims of Rwandan influence in DRC among dissident soldiers.
On June 25, DRC President Joseph Kabila and Rwandan President Paul Kagame recommitted themselves to the implementation of the Pretoria agreement signed by both men in July 2002 to end a four-year war between their two states.
Ajello said that the EU was working with the UN Security Council to "qualitatively rather that quantitatively" reinforce the UN mission, known as Monuc, so that it "genuinely represents a dissuasive element for those who wish to undermine the process."
– Sapa-AFP.
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