Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 18:42:44 +0300 (BEAUT)
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Subject: GREAT LAKES: IRIN Update 1,098  [2010123]
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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 1,098 for the Great Lakes (Tuesday 23 January)

CONTENTS:

DRC: Kabila buried but Kinshasa turbulent
DRC: Joseph Kabila told to opt for "openness"
DRC: Bukavu mourns Kabila
DRC: Rights group says Uganda should not "take sides" in Bunia
DRC: Up to 10,000 people flee Hema-Lendu clashes 
BURUNDI: Increasing malnutrition scare in the north  
BURUNDI: UN urged to pressure rebels to join peace process


DRC: Kabila buried but Kinshasa turbulent

Violence erupted in the DRC capital Kinshasa after the funeral on Tuesday
of slain President Laurent-Desire Kabila who was buried with full military
honours. Foreign dignitaries, including Kabila's allies Zimbabwean
President Robert Mugabe, President Jose Eduardo dos Santos of Angola and
President Sam Nujoma of Namibia, paid their last respects to the president
who was shot dead by one of his bodyguards last Tuesday. His adversaries,
Rwanda and Uganda, were not invited. Joseph Kabila, the president's son,
is set to be sworn in as the country's new head of state. News agencies
reported growing anti-western sentiment in Kinshasa, with many
grief-stricken residents accusing the west of masterminding the
assassination. 

Diplomatic sources in Kinshasa told IRIN they had been subjected to
incidents of stone-throwing and sticks had been hurled at diplomatic
vehicles travelling to and from the funeral ceremony. Diplomats were
accused of being "assassins" and "diamond thieves". 

Security in the capital was very tight. Ahead of the funeral, Congolese
state television broadcast an announcement warning residents that jet
fighters would be flying above the capital and a 21-gun salute would take
place. It urged the people of Kinshasa not to panic and to remain calm.
The statement added that Angolan troop reinforcements had been sent to
Kinshasa and the DRC's second city of Lubumbashi in Kabila's home province
of Katanga.

Speakers at the funeral included Interior Minister Gaetan Kakudji who said
the UN and the OAU should "activate themselves" and "really implement"
Security Council resolutions so that the "aggressors leave our territory".
A representative of the transitional parliament echoed his words, calling
on the "aggressors" to leave and expressing gratitude to Zimbabwe, Angola
and Namibia for their support.

DRC: Joseph Kabila told to opt for "openness" 

Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel, who is in Kinshasa for Kabila's
funeral, met the new DRC leader Joseph Kabila earlier on Tuesday,
diplomatic sources told IRIN. After the meeting, Michel described the
younger Kabila as "very calm and composed". He told Kabila of the need for
a "process of legitimisation" and implementation of the Lusaka peace
accord "without preconditions". "I also told him he should give out
precise signals showing more openness," Michel was quoted as saying. The
sources added that he was the only western minister to attend the funeral. 

The UN Secretary-General's special representative to the DRC, Kamel
Morjane, also met Kabila who assured him that his government wanted the UN
Mission in the DRC (MONUC) to continue its work there, a UN spokesman
said. Secretary-General Kofi Annan meanwhile - who is in Tokyo - has said
it is too early to think about sending peacekeeping troops to the DRC. 

DRC: Bukavu mourns Kabila

Inhabitants of the eastern town of Bukavu in South Kivu province are
mourning Kabila "to everyone's surprise", sources in the town told IRIN on
Tuesday. They said markets, shops, businesses and schools were closed and
very few vehicles were on the roads. The governing Rassemblement congolais
pour la democratie (RCD), which has been trying to topple Kabila, has so
far not intervened, although there are a few military patrols in the
streets. But the RCD warned residents in rebel-held territory not to
organise any demonstrations to commemorate Kabila's funeral,
rebel-controlled Goma radio said.

DRC: Rights group says Uganda should not "take sides" in Bunia

The New York-based rights organisation, Human Rights Watch, has said the
Ugandan government must be held responsible for security in areas under
its control. In a statement, HRW recalled the ethnic violence between the
Hema and Lendu communities in DRC's northeastern Ituri district. The
latest bout of fighting which resurged on Friday has killed at least 200
people, according to some reports. "Foreign troops should not be taking
sides in Congo's civil war," HRW said. "But if they are there, they should
certainly not be complicit in attacks against civilians." The report noted
that humanitarian workers were reluctant to assist victims because
"extremists" had accused them of taking sides in the dispute or even of
supplying arms. The area is nominally governed by the rebel Rassemblement
congolais pour la democratie-Mouvement de liberation (RCD-ML) with Ugandan
backing. Rebel-controlled Bunia radio on Monday said large numbers of
displaced people were descending on the town of Bunia. 

DRC: Up to 10,000 people flee Hema-Lendu clashes

UNHCR concurred that the clashes between ethnic Lendu and Hema communities
in Ituri Province, northeastern DRC, are driving more people from their
homes. In addition to those fleeing east into Bundibugyo district of
Uganda, an estimated 10,000 Hema have reportedly fled west, towards
Kisangani, inside the DRC, UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski told journalists
on Tuesday. Refugees arriving in Kyangwali, south of the border town of
Bundibugyo, at the weekend were mainly Hemas and claimed that the Lendus
were targeting them, as well as some Lendu moderates accused of being Hema
sympathisers, Janowski said. "They killed my father, my mother, my brother
and my kid. They came in large numbers. I ran away during the attack and I
later saw my home in flames," one Hema refugee in Kamuga transit camp told
UNHCR. The refugees said the attackers were armed with guns, spears and
bows and arrows, he added. 

The recent fighting is reported to have claimed hundreds of lives in the
Ituri area, Janowski stated. Over the past 10 days, thousands of Hema have
flooded into western Uganda, which already hosted some 100,000 people
displaced by the Ugandan rebel Allied Democratic Forces (ADF). In a bid to
avert friction with local farmers, UNHCR and the Ugandan authorities have
identified two temporary grazing areas in Chibuki and Mutungamo in
Bundibugyo district for the refugees' 25,000 head of cattle. The refugees'
herds are also being vaccinated. UNHCR has moved 6,000 Hema refugees into
transit centres in Rwabasengo and Kamuga, in Bundibugyo district, and
distributed food and household supplies to the refugees, Janowski said.
Before their transfer to the transit centres, some of the refugees were
sleeping in the open. 

BURUNDI: Increasing malnutrition scare in the north

A number of provinces in northern Burundi have experienced a dramatic
deterioration in malnutrition rates in recent months, and WFP has warned
it may soon face difficulties coping with increasing needs, the UN Office
for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on Tuesday.
UNICEF said admissions to nutritional centres had increased up to 68
percent countrywide since September, while the health NGO Medecins sans
frontieres (MSF) has warned that malnutrition rates in supplementary
feeding centres in Karuzi Province were five times higher than in normal
years, the report said. Karuzi, Kayanza, Muyinga and Ngozi Provinces were
particularly affected, it added. Consecutive poor harvests due to drought,
coupled with a serious malaria epidemic, have worsened normal patterns of
malnutrition in Burundi. 

WFP has distributed food rations to 15,000 people in the first half of
January but says it may soon face difficulties with supplies, due to
rapidly-emptying stocks and pipeline problems caused by recurrent rail
problems between Burundi and Dar Es Salaam port in Tanzania, according to
OCHA. The situation is further exacerbated by shortages of corn-soya blend
(CSB) and oil. To make for the shortage of these products, UNICEF has
requested 500 mt of the powdered food supplement Unimix, the first
shipment of which is expected to arrive in Burundi on Monday 29 January,
OCHA stated. Burundi is one of the most underfunded humanitarian
emergencies globally, with UN agencies receiving only one quarter of the
funding they requested last year, it added. 

BURUNDI: UN urged to pressure rebels to join peace process

The Burundi government has told the UN Security Council that it hopes
overtures being made to the rebel Parti pour la liberation du peuple
hutu-Forces nationales pour la liberation (PALIPEHUTU-FNL) would lead
without delay to negotiations, similar to those it held earlier this month
with the other main rebel group, Conseil national pour la defense de la
democratie-Forces pour la defense de la democratie (CNDD/FDD). Burundi
Ambassador to the UN Mark Nteturuye said in a letter dated 17 January that
the aim of the 9 January meeting between President Pierre Buyoya and FDD
leader Jean-Bosco Ndayikengurukiye in Libreville, Gabon, was "to bring the
rebel leaders to the negotiating table to achieve a ceasefire, under the
auspices of the [Arusha talks] mediator, Nelson Mandela". Nteturuye asked
the Security Council to urge the rebel groups to "join the Arusha peace
process, stop holding peace hostage and resist being duped by external
forces". 

The Burundi government hoped the Libreville meeting would lead the FDD to
embark on an irreversible course away from violence, since a ceasefire was
"the essential precondition for the true implementation of the Arusha
Agreement", according to an annexe to Nteturuye's letter. The date and
place of the next meeting with the rebels must be established as soon as
possible, it said. However, Nteturuye also called on the Security Council
to condemn CNDD-FDD and PALIPEHUTU-FNL violence against the civilian
population, and said these groups must be brought to justice for
violations of humanitarian law. The government urged donors "to come
forward with the aid promised at the pledging conference in Paris on 11
and 12 December 2000", he added. 

Nairobi, 23 January 2001, 15:40 gmt

[ENDS]

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


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