UN: Central Africa should end conflicts
The UN Security Council urged leaders in central Africa's Great Lakes region Wednesday to seize the momentum of recent positive political developments to make progress toward ending conflicts and the illegal exploitation of gold and other natural resources in eastern Congo.
A presidential statement adopted by the UN's most powerful body cited diplomatic efforts reinvigorated by the presidents of Congo, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi that have resulted in improved bilateral cooperation. The council also commended efforts by the African Union and regional groups to support the political process and help solve conflicts in the region.
The Great Lakes region has been a hotbed of political instability and fighting since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda saw more than 500,000 people, most of them from the country's Tutsi minority, slaughtered by a regime of extremists from its Hutu majority. After Tutsi rebels led by Paul Kagame, Rwanda's current president, ended the genocide, extremist Hutus fled into neighboring eastern Congo.
Rwanda, together with neighbor Uganda, twice invaded Congo - in 1994 and 1998. The second invasion sparked a five-year, sixnation war in Congo that killed some 3 million people. Rwanda and Congo normalized relations in 2007, and 11 countries signed a U.N.-drafted peace agreement in 2013 to stabilize Congo and not to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries in the region.
Raychelle Omamo, Kenya's Cabinet secretary for foreign affairs who chaired the council meeting, said that in the Great Lakes region there is now greater regional and bilateral cooperation, the thawing of tensions, "and a movement towards looking at holistic solutions to deal with the challenge of conflict, of poverty and underdevelopment."
"The linkages between natural resources and conflict remains a key challenge for many of the Great Lakes countries," she said, Huang Xia, the U.N. special envoy for the Great Lakes region, told the council that ministerial consultations and numerous state visits during the past six months "have provided a momentum to bilateral relations" in the region and a revitalization of cooperation in areas such as security, trade, infrastructure, transport, natural resources and energy.
"The bilateral and regional initiatives show that there is an emergence of a community of joint destiny, aware of the value added of dialogue and cooperation as the tools for being good neighbors," he said.
But Huang said that despite these accomplishments, continued activity by armed groups remains the main threat to peace and security in the region.
He singled out renewed attacks in eastern Congo by the ADF rebel group, which originated in Uganda, and by the Red Tabara rebel group against the airport in Burundi's capital in September.