Accord gives hope for peace in DR Congo
KINSHASA // The new year in one of Africa’s most troubled countries began with optimism yesterday after rival groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo agreed on a deal to end a political crisis.
Under the accord, president Joseph Kabila – who under the constitution should have left office on December 20 – will stay in power until elections are held at the end of this year.
During this period, a so-called national transition council will be set up, headed by opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi. A prime minister will be named from opposition ranks.
The deal was reached after talks launched by the Roman Catholic Church amid escalating violence, claiming between up to 100 lives.
Several last- minute hitches nearly derailed an accord before the deal was announced late on Saturday after 13 hours of talks. Archbishop Marcel Utembi, head of the National Episcopal Conference of Congo, described the accord as an “inclusive political compromise”. The European Union foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini, in a statement with Neven Mimica, the European commissioner for international cooperation, warned that “during the transition period, the institutions of state will draw their legitimacy both from their inclusiveness and their ability to implement the agreement in all its respects”.
Resource-rich but chronically poor, sapped by corruption and politically unstable, the DR Congo has never had a democratic transfer of power since independence from Belgium in 1960.
Two decades ago, the country collapsed into the deadliest conflict in modern African history.
Its two wars in the late 1990s and early 2000s left more than three million dead. Its restive east remains a battleground for rival ethnic militias.