Ban challenges African leaders over Congo

KAMPALA: United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon yesterday urged African leaders to implement a peace plan that the UN hopes will stabilize eastern Congo, a region long plagued by violence and which now is back on edge. Ban told a news conference in Uganda that he expects regional leaders to try to find solutions as eastern Congo once again descends into another phase of hostilities sparked partly by the UN’s deployment of a brigade of peacekeepers with a mandate to attack rebel groups. Ban said the deployment would become fully operational “in a matter of weeks,” although only about 100 members of a planned brigade of 3,000 have arrived there so far.

Along with World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, Ban met this week with some influential leaders in East and Central Africa in hopes of keeping alive a treaty signed in February by the UN and 11 African countries. That treaty, also known as the UN’s peace and security cooperation framework for Congo, has been overshadowed by renewed hostilities between the Congolese army and the M23, the most prominent rebel group currently operating in eastern Congo. Peace talks under the banner of a regional bloc chaired by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni have hit a dead end amid fears of a return to war.