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DR Congo: Borderlands risk plunging back into war-UN chief
Fri. September 05, 2008 02:27 am.- By Bonny Apunyu. -
(SomaliNet) The UN peacekeeping mission chief said the DRC's eastern borderlands risk plunging back into all-out war between the army and Tutsi rebels after the heaviest clashes in months.
Meanwhile last week, the enemies fought heavy battles in North Kivu province, where violence fuelled by simmering ethnic tensions has raged despite the official end of the broader 1998-2003 war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Last week's fighting was among the worst since President Joseph Kabila's government signed a ceasefire deal with renegade Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda's rebels and other militias in January.
The struggling peace process was plagued by daily ceasefire violations, and talks to bring rebels out of the bush are at an impasse.
"There hasn't been as much progress as we initially thought, but we just have to keep after it," said Alan Doss, the head of the 17 000-strong UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC, facing public protests for failing to end the conflict.
"What's the alternative? War? Who benefits from that? Certainly not the country. Certainly not North Kivu. And certainly not the population of North Kivu," he said.
Like other armed groups during over a decade of violence in Congo, Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) is profiting from mining operations, experts say.
Government officials said this week they had closed and abandoned a border crossing into Uganda that had become a key source of revenue for Nkunda. Analysts said the move simply left the crossing - and revenues from lucrative exports of cassiterite tin ore from North Kivu - in Nkunda's hands.
The UN and international mediators have called on both sides to respect the ceasefire, pull back troops and let peacekeepers from the Monuc force set up buffer zones.
Both sides have so far resisted calls to disengage, and diplomats accuse Nkunda's CNDP of undermining the peace process by repeatedly cancelling talks.
Over 800 000 people have been forced from their homes by fighting in North Kivu since late 2006, in one of the world's worst conflict-driven humanitarian disasters. An estimated 5,4 million people have died since Congo's war began.-Cape Times
News Category: Africa
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