Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2000 18:17:47 +0300 (BEAUT)
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Subject: GREAT LAKES: IRIN-CEA Update 1,045 [2001103]
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U N I T E D  N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Integrated Regional Information Network
for Central and Eastern Africa

Tel: +254 2 622147
Fax: +254 2 622129
e-mail: irin@ocha.unon.org

IRIN-CEA Update 1,045 for the Great Lakes (Friday 3 November)

CONTENTS:

BURUNDI: Rebel group warns against enforcing "unworkable ceasefire"
BURUNDI: Assembly work falters over Arusha accord
BURUNDI: Serious malaria problem reported in Mwaro
DRC: RCD reported to have recaptured Pepa
DRC: Masire determined to continue as facilitator
DRC: Deputy minister reiterates rejection of Masire
DRC: Senior US officer meets Kabila
DRC: Mbandaka mission to consider UN troop deployment
DRC: Red Cross trains military staff in war surgery
RWANDA: UN rights expert concerned about vulnerable groups
RWANDA: Prisoners released in Gitarama
RWANDA: Swazi minister silent after stopping repatriation
UGANDA: Rebels killed in border clash


BURUNDI: Rebel group warns against enforcing "unworkable ceasefire"

The rebel PALIPEHUTU-FNL movement has reiterated its call for a new peace
process. In a letter to the president of the UN Security Council, a copy
of which was seen by IRIN on Friday, the movement's leader Cossan Kabura
said the new process "should be between the real belligerents [the rebels
and the army] and deal with political issues before embarking on military
ones such as a ceasefire, which should be discussed during the process". 

"Why should PALIPEHUTU-FNL be told to sign a ceasefire of a political
process from which it has been excluded?" Kabura asked. "We took up arms
because all the peaceful means had been exhausted. The ball is in the
Bujumbura government's court." He said his group was ready to hold direct
talks with the government as long as the Burundi authorities recognised
PALIPEHUTU-FNL as a political party "legally operating in Burundi, whose
armed wing (FNL) is engaged in a war with the government army". He added
that the government should also "solemnly declare in a letter to the
international facilitator [Nelson Mandela] that it is ready to hold
political talks with the party". Kabura warned the Security Council
against "taking harsh and hasty actions such as enforcing an unworkable
ceasefire in wartorn Burundi". 

BURUNDI: Assembly work falters over Arusha accord

The working of the National Assembly slowed to a virtual halt on Wednesday
and Thursday as rival Tutsi and Hutu political parties disagreed on
whether to proceed with regular business or discuss the ratification of
the Arusha agreement for peace and reconciliation as a matter of utmost
urgency, the Burundi news agency ABP reported. Members of the Front for
Democracy in Burundi (FRODEBU) on Wednesday rose in protest as the
Assembly addressed the amendment of a 1969 Act concerning rental revenue,
as scheduled, and insisted that the Arusha agreement be discussed before
anything else, an ABP report stated on Thursday. MPs of the influential
Convergence nationale pour la paix et la reconciliation (CNPR) disagreed,
and proposed - in opposition to their colleagues in the G-7 group of
pro-Hutu parties - that the Assembly continue with the regular order of
business, the report said. After two hours of discussion, the Speaker of
the House Leonce Ngendakumana suspended the rental revenue discussion and
consultations on ratification of the Arusha accord followed, ABP said.
Ngendakumana said he would refer the matter back to the government if
these discussions were not successful, it added. 

BURUNDI: Serious malaria problem reported in Mwaro

Half of the residents of Nyabihanga Commune and surrounding areas of Mwaro
Province, central Burundi, were now suffering from malaria in a strange
and worrying occurrence, according to local health officials cited by a
report from the BBC's Kirundi/Kinyarwanda service on Thursday. Over 23,000
people had become ill with malaria in the second half of October, of whom
452 died, a medical officer in Nyabihanga told the station. Malaria cases
had always been reported in the area, where malaria is endemic, but not to
the extent seen recently, he said. Health workers were struggling to cope
with the volume of people reporting to clinics, without enough doctors and
without sufficient quantities and variety of anti-malarial drugs, he
added. 

DRC: RCD reported to have recaptured Pepa

The rebel Rassemblement congolais pour democratie (RCD-Goma) on Wednesday
recaptured the town of Pepa, in Katanga province, according to South Kivu
governor Norbert Basengezi, quoted by the BBC on Thursday. RCD troops
killed 35 government soldiers and seized "a lot of weapons", including
army vehicles, he said. No one was killed on the RCD side, according to
Basengezi, but the BBC quoted independent sources as saying that three RCD
soldiers were killed and five others injured. The governor said the
government had continued to violate the Lusaka agreement by attacking
areas under RCD control in Kivu, Katanga and Kasai. The Forces armees
congolaises (FAC) had seized control of Pepa and Moba last month, and a
Rwandan-led counter-attack had not been unexpected, according to
diplomatic sources.  Basengezi also alleged that Rwandan and Burundian
refugees had "divided" the Congolese, destroyed the environment and
contributed in the spread of AIDS in the Kivus, the BBC added. 

There was now fear that Katanga fighting could derail the so-called Maputo
process - a parallel to the Lusaka peace initiative arising from the
face-to-face meeting of Kabila and his allies, and senior Ugandan and
Rwandan leaders on the other, in the Mozambican capital in mid-October -
before it had got fully underway, diplomatic sources told IRIN. 

DRC: Masire determined to continue as facilitator

Former Botswana president Ketumile Masire, facilitator of the
inter-Congolese dialogue provided for in the Lusaka ceasefire agreement on
the DRC, has announced that he is determined to continue in his role,
despite the fierce opposition of DRC President Laurent-Desire Kabila. "I
am still firm in my determination to continue my role as such a
facilitator as long as those who decided to give me this task do not
unanimously agree otherwise, because they have found other ways to achieve
the desired results," Masire said at a recent diplomatic briefing. He said
the fact that one of the signatories [Kabila] might now question his value
as facilitator, "evidently has not disqualified me in the eyes of all the
others, or in the eyes of the international community at large". Masire
said he and his staff would continue to make every effort "to prepare for
the day when the Congolese dialogue can start for real, thereby opening
the door for the Congo of tomorrow". 

The facilitator said a considerable time had passed since the signing of
the Lusaka Agreement, and that these had been filled with regrettable
violations which caused "inexcusable suffering" for the ordinary people of
Congo, not to mention the economic consequences of the conflict. "It
should be clear to everyone that the process in itself is more important
than the persons who happen to be part of it... As long as we are actively
involved there, it is our moral obligation to do our utmost to seek
solutions which comply with the will of the Congolese people," Masire
said. He acknowledged that there were many complex interests involved in
the conflict, but said "there should be only one overriding concern for
all those who claim that their primary interest is the well-being of the
Congolese people: to search for practical and realistic solutions which
can be accepted by the majority of the Congolese." 

DRC: Deputy minister reiterates rejection of Masire

Meanwhile, DRC Deputy Foreign Minister Irung Awan on Wednesday reiterated
in a letter addressed to Ketumile Masire that the Congolese government
"refused" to have him act as mediator in the inter-Congolese dialogue,
Radio-Television Nationale Congolaise (RTNC) reported. Kabila's outright
rejection of Masire, and the facilitator's public accusation this week
that Kabila was blocking Lusaka in general and the dialogue process in
particular, has effectively ruled out any future role for him as talks
facilitator in the DRC process, according to diplomatic sources. Whether a
new facilitator would eventually be chosen or a wholly new mechanism
established to achieve some kind of dialogue remained unclear, they said. 
Kabila's insistence that the Lusaka Agreement - signed in the summer of
1999, when Kabila was militarily weak - should be revised also appeared to
be gaining ground, especially among African leaders, they added. The call
for a revision of Lusaka was advanced by Kabila and his SADC allies at
both a 16 October summit in the Mozambican capital Maputo and a subsequent
meeting of Central African leaders in Kinshasa on 27 October. 

DRC: Senior US officer meets Kabila

General Charles Simpson, a senior figure in the European command of the US
army, met DRC President Kabila in Kinshasa on Wednesday, according to a
Reuters news agency report on Thursday. It quoted a US embassy official as
saying that the officer was in the country to discuss "how to resolve the
many-sided war" in the DRC. "The US and the international community wish
to move forward in finding a peaceful solution and to bring a lasting
peace to the region," Congolese Television quoted General Simpson as
saying. Simpson is director of planning and policy at the US-European
Command in Stuttgart, Germany, Reuters stated. 

DRC: Mbandaka mission to consider UN troop deployment

A joint mission from the DRC Ministry of Defence and the UN Mission in the
DRC (MONUC) is to undertake reconnaissance in Mbandaka, Equateur province,
next week to explore the possibility of UN peacekeepers deploying in the
city, and the requirements for this to happen. Another such mission is
scheduled for a week later to Kananga, the capital of Kasai Occidental
province, to assess locations and requirements for possible troop
deployment there, according to humanitarian sources in the DRC. 

DRC: Red Cross trains military staff in war surgery

The practical section of a seminar on war surgery held by the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in September was now
taking place at the military hospital in Kokolo camp in Kinshasa, with
doctors and nurses of the Congolese military (FAC) being trained in the
operating theatre by a Red Cross doctor, the ICRC stated in a press
release on Thursday. A dozen military medical personnel had already
assisted the doctor operate on two patients, and others would be treated
in the coming days, it said. The Red Cross movement has been providing the
Ministries of Defence and Public Health with support for almost four years
to improve the treatment of war-wounded, according to the statement. Its
support includes training for military stretcher-bearers by members of the
DRC Red Cross Society, and ICRC training for civilian and military medical
staff who operate on the wounded.  The ICRC also lent assistance to health
facilities evacuating war-wounded, and physical rehabilitation to amputees
at a prosthetic/ orthotic centre in Kinshasa, the statement said. 

RWANDA: UN rights expert concerned about vulnerable groups

The UN Special Representative on the situation of human rights in Rwanda,
Michel Moussalli, has expressed concern about children, women and the
displaced in the country. In a report to the UN General Assembly's third
committee (social, humanitarian and cultural affairs) on Wednesday,
Moussalli commended the international agencies and NGOs who were helping
to improve the living conditions of the vulnerable. "Yet the situation of
orphaned street children was such that they were forced into crimes, while
women survivors of the genocide were traumatised and without support or
recourse against perpetrators," he observed. Moussalli said some 350,000
displaced persons had not been integrated and were living in "very
precarious conditions"  under plastic sheeting. "A successful integration
project developed by the UNDP, UNHCR and WFP had been interrupted due to
lack of resources," he said. 

The UNHCR has said that the international community was withholding
funding in the belief that efforts should be directed towards development,
Moussalli said. However, the tension created by the situation was of
concern, and the UNHCR acting representative in Rwanda was hoping to
restart assistance, he added. Moussalli said that almost three million
refugees had returned to Rwanda between 1996 and 1998, and noted that
security had "improved considerably" in the country since 1997, although
isolated incidents of killings and disappearances continued. "While the
Local Defence Forces (LDF)  at times abused their power, on the whole -
and compared to the situation prevailing in the Great Lakes Region -
Rwanda was an island of stability and relative security," he added. 

RWANDA: Prisoners released in Gitarama

Forty-nine inmates of Gitarama central prison in Central Rwanda were
released on Thursday after reportedly being declared "not guilty" in Taba
and Tambwe, their communes of origin, Rwandan radio reported on Friday.
The prisoners were released after a visit by members of the Gitarama
Prefecture security council, led by its prefect, Fulgence Nsengegiyunva,
the report said. Prisoners with "incurable" diseases were also released.
The same measure would be applied to prisoners from other communes who
have no files". The Gitarama security council visit was aimed at assessing
conditions prevailing in the central prison, and in cells at Nyamabuye
commune which were also visited. 

RWANDA: Swazi minister silent after stopping repatriation

Swaziland's Home Affairs Minister Sobandla Dlamini on Thursday refused to
say why he intervened in the repatriation of a Rwandan family wanted in
Rwanda in connection with the 1994 genocide. The German Press Agency (dpa) 
quoted Dlamini as saying that the reason he stopped the family's
repatriation via Mozambique to face charges at the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was "confidential", and that he would not
disclose it to parliament. A Swazi legislator quoted by dpa said the
family was now "happily living in Mbabane, enjoying refugee status despite
an agreement between Swaziland and Rwanda to repatriate them". 

The official said the family had escaped to South Africa earlier this year
when it learned of the repatriation agreement between Rwanda and
Swaziland, but they were returned to Swazi immigration officials who told
their South African counterparts that the family "had left their small
children behind".  The family was now living in the house of another
Rwandan, also wanted in his homeland genocide charges, the legislator
said. Swazi immigration officials had undertaken to repatriate the family
via Mozambique to Tanzania, where the ICTR sits in the northern town of
Arusha, but that Dlamini telephoned the police to stop the repatriation at
Lomahasha border post, the official added. 

UGANDA: Rebels killed in border clash

At least 10 people, eight of them believed to be Congolese from the
Wangilima tribe, were killed early this week in an exchange of fire with
the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) in Kasindi market on the DRC
side of the Uganda-DRC border, Ugandan radio reported on Friday. The
Wangilima had tried to "disarm" soldiers in a bid to raid the market, the
report said. It quoted UPDF field commander Lieutenant-Colonel Tumusiime
Nyakaitana as saying that two of the attackers were captured. The station
also quoted UPDF spokesman Phineas Katirima as saying that the attempted
attack was not a major threat to the country's security. 

[ENDS]


[IRIN-CEA: Tel: +254 2 622147 Fax: +254 2 622129 e-mail: irin-cea@ocha.unon.org ]


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