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Rwanda, Congo Set to Hold Landmark Summit
Rwandan President Paul Kagame will on Thursday hold talks with his Congolese counterpart Joseph Kabila under the facilitation of Malawian President Bakili Muluzi, Rwanda News Agency reported on Wednesday.
"President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) would meet for two days in Blantyre under the auspices of the Malawian President Bakili Muluzi," Kagame's Press Secretary, Nicholas Shalita, was quoted as saying in the Rwandan capital of Kigali.
Muluzi chairs the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC), which has mandated him to try to accelerate the peace process of war-ravaged DRC.
According to Shalita, the talks are expected to focus on speeding up the implementation of the July 1999 Lusaka peace agreement and the withdrawal of foreign forces from Africa's third largest nation.
Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda have been behind the splintered rebel groups fighting to overthrow the Kabila government, while Kabila has been supported by armies from Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe in a conflict dubbed Africa's "world war I" because it is many-sided.
Although not all warring parties will take part in the two-day talks, observers of the foes in Africa's biggest conflicts described the talks as being paramount.
"President Kagame is one of the key players in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and it is encouraging that he will participate. He should be seen as representing the alternative view, and that is very important," one observer who preferred anonymity was quoted as saying in Kigali.
Rwanda, a tiny central African country but militarily powerful, invaded the DRC for the second time in 1998, after accusing Kinshasa, once a close ally, of backing exiled Rwandan Hutu rebels who were using the DRC as a springboard for attacks on Rwanda.
Uganda and Burundi also sent troops, saying their own territories were under attack from foes based in the DRC. Only a swift military intervention by Angola, Chad, Namibia and Zimbabwe stopped the three countries from overthrowing the government in Kinshasa.
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