UN draft seeks to boost DRC force
November 18, 2008
The UN mission in DR Congo is struggling to contain the fighting
France has presented a draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council aimed at strengthening the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Guinea-Bissau vote goes smoothly
November 17, 2008
power-sharing agreement broke down in July, prompting the election
The people of Guinea-Bissau have voted in parliamentary elections that were seen as a major test of its stability.
International observers said there had been a high turnout and that voting had been calm and orderly. Official results are not expected until next Friday.
Peace talks amid DR Congo clashes
November 16, 2008
Mr Obasanjo hopes to mediate an end to weeks of violence
Heavy fighting erupted in eastern DR Congo as the UN special envoy Olusegun Obasanjo began talks with DR Congo’s rebel leader Laurent Nkunda.
Mr Obasanjo, Nigeria’s ex-president, was greeted by Gen Nkunda in the rebel-held town of Jomba, north-east of Goma.
UN envoy to mediate in DR Congo
November 15, 2008
UN peacekeepers protected a convoy delivering aid to eastern areas
UN special envoy Olusegun Obasanjo, the former Nigerian president, is in the Democratic Republic of Congo for talks aimed at ending months of violence.
After meeting President Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa, Mr Obasanjo is to travel to Goma, where he has said he wants to meet rebel leader Laurent Nkunda.
Navy shoots pirate suspects dead
November 13, 2008
The crew of the dhow surrendered after being circled by navy launches
The Royal Navy has repelled a pirate attack on a Danish cargo-ship off the coast of Yemen, shooting dead two men believed to be Somali pirates.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) confirmed the incident took place on Tuesday, when HMS Cumberland crew members tried to board a traditional wooden dhow.
UN appeals for DR Congo back-up
November 12, 2008
There were only 10 UN soldiers for every 10,000 inhabitants in the east
The head of UN peacekeeping has asked the UN Security Council for more than 3,000 extra troops to protect civilians in the eastern DR Congo.
Alain Le Roy said current peacekeeper numbers were not enough to protect civilians from violence perpetrated by rebel groups and the Congolese army.
DR Congo angry at rebel demands
November 11, 2008
Laurent Nkunda issues warning to President Kabila
The Democratic Republic of Congo government has rejected calls for talks with a rebel leader whose forces control eastern areas.
Gen Laurent Nkunda has said his forces would topple the government if no agreement to negotiate is struck.
But DR Congo’s ambassador to the United Nations said Gen Nkunda should be in jail for war crimes.
Gen Nkunda commands 6,000 Tutsi rebels in the east, where some 250,000 people have been displaced by recent fighting.
The rebel leader says his forces are respecting a ceasefire, although they still surround the city of Goma, which is protected by UN peacekeepers.
In an interview with the BBC, Gen Nkunda reiterated a threat to overthrow the government of President Joseph Kabila unless it holds talks.
However, correspondents say it is not clear that his small force could really threaten the capital, Kinshasa, 1,600km (1,000 miles) to the west.
Gen Nkunda’s remarks were summarily dismissed by Atoki Ileka, the country’s UN envoy, who called the rebel leader “a killer”.
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  Face-to-face with Nkunda
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“Laurent Nkunda has been labelled by the United Nations since 2002 as a warlord and a war criminal since the massacres in Kisangani in 2002 when he was general for the [rebel] RCD Goma,” Mr Ileka said.
“So I don’t have any trust in him. What I want - like I said to him about four years ago - [is] that one day I’m going to visit him. I’m going to visit him when he’s going to be in jail.
“You don’t negotiate with criminals, you catch a criminal and put him in jail so he can respond to justice.”
But Gen Nkunda said the way to resolve the current crisis was through negotiation.
“If he [President Joseph Kabila] refuses to talk now he will not be able to rule Congo and to lead it,” he said.
“We have to liberate Congo. Congo has to be free and to develop.”
‘Criminal’
Gen Nkunda has always said he is fighting to protect his Tutsi community from attacks by Rwandan Hutu rebels, who fled to DR Congo after Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. He accuses the army of working with the Hutu forces.
He spoke to the BBC at his mountain headquarters, three hours’ drive outside Goma.
BBC World Affairs correspondent Mark Doyle says the threat may just be aimed at strengthening Gen Nkunda’s political position.
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FORCES AROUND GOMA
 CNDP: Gen Nkunda’s Tutsi rebels - 6,000 fighters
FDLR: Rwandan Hutus - 6-7,000
Mai Mai: pro-government militia - 3,500
Monuc: UN peacekeepers - 800 (17,000 nationwide)
DRC army - 50,000 (nationwide)
Source: UN, military experts
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But he says it raises the stakes at an extremely tense time, when other African countries are also threatening to intervene on the side of the elected Congolese government.
In the most recent clashes, Gen Nkunda’s forces have taken a series of towns and villages near Goma, the capital of DR Congo’s North Kivu province.
The UN has accused both sides of war crimes, following the reported killing of several civilians in the eastern town of Kiwanja last week.
Gen Nkunda claimed his forces had simply been responding to attacks.
“Since we declared the ceasefire, we were attacked around six times or seven times,” he said.
“We are reacting only, but the ceasefire is there.”
On Sunday, Southern African leaders pledged to provide military advice to the Congolese army and said they would send a peacekeeping force if and when necessary.
Rwanda, which is led by Tutsi President Paul Kagame, has denied claims that it has been backing Gen Nkunda. But it has twice invaded DR Congo, saying it wanted to act against the Hutu rebels.
The UN has 17,000 peacekeepers in DR Congo, its largest mission in the world, but only a few hundred peacekeepers are in the areas affected by the latest violence.
Zimbabwe compromise call rejected
November 10, 2008
Zimbabwe compromise call rejected
Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has rejected a compromise plan aimed at breaking the country’s political deadlock.
A summit of southern African leaders had told Zimbabwe’s rival parties they should share control of the disputed home affairs ministry.
Zimbabwe in ‘make or break’ talks
November 9, 2008
An earlier regional meeting failed to resolve the crisis
Southern African leaders are gathering in Johannesburg for talks aimed at breaking Zimbabwe’s political deadlock.
President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai have been unable to agree details of a power sharing deal following disputed polls.
South Africa has promised to take a tough stance, saying that Zimbabwe cannot afford to descend into conflict.
A top Zimbabwean government official said that Sunday’s meetings would be “make or break”.
The summit is also expected to discuss the ongoing violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Sticking point
Mr Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), and Mr Mugabe signed the power-sharing deal in September, but have since been unable to agree on how to share cabinet posts.
The key sticking point at the latest round of talks was control of the home affairs ministry, which is responsible for the police.
South African President Kgalema Motlanthe, who will chair this emergency meeting of leaders from the Southern African Development Community (SADC), said Zimbabwe’s internal disputes were “a luxury they really can least afford”.
“They should be striving to form one government for the people of Zimbabwe so that they can really begin to tackle the challenges of economic recovery and political stability,” he said.
Mr Biti said Zimbabwe was becoming an embarrassment to all Africans
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The country is facing severe food shortages and rampant inflation but neither side appears to be willing to compromise.
The summit follows a smaller meeting at the end of October, which concluded without success.
A top Zimbabwean government official told AFP that Sunday’s meetings would be “make or break”.
He said that if Mr Tsvangirai and his party “continue to make outrageous demands, shifting goalposts”, the ruling Zanu-PF party would go its own way, adding: “We don’t care what the world will say.”
Meanwhile, an opposition spokesman said that unless there was a “major shift” in Zanu-PF’s position, the MDC would not accept the deal.
“We are not prepared to accept anything that is not worthwhile for Zimbabweans,” he said.
MDC chairman Tendai Biti said that Zimbabwe had become “an embarrassment to every African”.
“We need to close this chapter of Zimbabwe so that Zimbabwe can reconstruct, can restart and can rehabilitate itself and can move forward,” he said.
The BBC’s Peter Biles in Johannesburg says that despite the international pressure, there is little sense of optimism about the summit.
Last week, the MDC claimed that Mr Mugabe’s party had “killed the dialogue” by unleashing “a new orgy of brutality and assaults across the whole country”.
It said a Zanu-PF militia group had attacked at least 25 MDC supporters in the capital, Harare, and that state security forces had raided homes belonging to MDC supporters, arresting nine people including a two-year-old child.
Although the summit was called to discuss Zimbabwe, it is also expected to address the ongoing violence in the DR Congo, where tens of thousands of people have been displaced by fighting between rebel groups.
Source: bbc.co.uk/
Thousands flee DR Congo clashes
November 6, 2008
Displaced Kiwanja residents seek refuge at nearby camp
Rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have forced thousands of civilians out of a town which they have taken from a pro-government militia.
The rebels took Kiwanja after a second day of fighting with the Pareco Mai-Mai group. They then ordered citizens out so they could search the town.
Rebel leader Gen Laurent Nkunda accused the government of breaking a ceasefire declared last week.
At least 250,000 people have fled their homes amid the fighting.
Many women and children were among those forced from Kiwanja on Wednesday.
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Witnesses reported killing and looting, and some people were wounded, a BBC correspondent who travelled to the town reported.
Kiwanja lies about 80km (50 miles) from the regional capital of North Kivu, Goma.
Tens of thousands of displaced people are already in and around Goma, which Gen Nkunda has threatened to attack - though the ceasefire around the city appears to be holding for now.
Any battles there could trigger a humanitarian catastrophe, the BBC’s Peter Greste reports from the city.
Tens of thousands of people have taken refuge around Goma
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In a significant hardening of their position, UN peacekeeping troops in Goma have been ordered to fire on any armed groups trying to enter the city.
Meanwhile UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is on his way to Kenya for an African Union (AU) summit on the crisis in DR Congo.
He is due to meet Congolese President Joseph Kabila and Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
Turned back
The fighting at Kiwanja, near Rutshuru, has forced some aid workers to suspend their activities a day after bringing in the first food convoy to rebel-held territory.
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The UN refugee agency says three camps for displaced people near Rutshuru have been emptied and destroyed.
The agency has been trying to establish the fate of about 50,000 people who had been sheltering in the area.
The BBC correspondent who was in Kiwanja said a UN convoy that travelled north from Goma had so far only been able to deliver food and beer to the peacekeepers.
The convoy had turned back to Goma after the most recent outbreak of fighting, he said.
Gen Nkunda says he is fighting to protect his Tutsi community from attack by Rwandan Hutu rebels, some of whom are accused of taking part in the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
Rwanda has been accused of backing Gen Nkunda’s rebels, a charge which it has denied.
Mr Kagame said on Wednesday that he would attend the summit in Kenya, but the real cause of the violence in DR Congo was the failure of the country’s leadership.
He said it was “a problem for Congo to simply address directly without ambiguity, without blaming anybody else for it”.
Goma threat
Gen Nkunda has threatened to topple the DR Congo government in Kinshasa, 1,580km (980 miles) west of Goma, unless President Kabila agrees to hold direct talks.
He has said his forces are now free to pursue their offensive, accusing the government of breaking the ceasefire.
The militia attacked Nkunda’s rebels in territory they took last week
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In the latest fighting, his rebels have clashed with Pareco Mai-Mai forces mainly made up of Congolese Hutus, who Gen Nkunda alleges are backed by the government.
On Tuesday, the militia attacked rebel-held positions in Kiwanja and near Rutshuru. Rebels responded using heavy artillery they say was captured from army positions in recent fighting.
Correspondents say the militia involvement in the fighting makes any push for negotiations between Gen Nkunda and the government more complicated.
The latest clashes sparked fears the rebels could follow through on their threat to attack Goma - or target Masisi, a hub for Rwandan Hutu rebels west of Goma where aid workers have been evacuated and that is now surrounded by Gen Nkunda’s men.
Our correspondent in Goma says the rebel threat against Kinshasa could be hubris, as it is hard to see how he could transport between 6,000 and 7,000 fighters all the way across a country the size of western Europe.
The rebel forces do, however, appear to have the strength to take Goma, he said.
The head of the UN mission in Congo has urged Gen Nkunda not to carry out his threat against the regional capital, saying peacekeepers there are bringing in reinforcements.
“We will do our best to protect the people of Goma,” Alan Doss told the BBC.
Source: bbc.co.uk/