Great Lakes leaders urge Congolese rebels to abandon war

The leaders of countries in the Great Lakes region of Africa have met in the Ugandan capital in their latest effort to bring a halt to the interminable cycles of violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Meeting in Kampala on Saturday, the leaders of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) called on the March 23 movement (M23) to abandon its threat to overthrow the elected government in Kinshasa and to “stop all war activities and withdraw from Goma,” a strategic city in the eastern Congo that the rebels captured on November 20.

Four regional leaders attended the summit of the 11-member ICGLR, which was hosted by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.

Congolese President Joseph Kabila, Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, and Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki travelled to Uganda for the meeting.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame did not attend the summit, but he sent his foreign minister to the meeting.

Kinshasa and UN experts say that Rwanda is supplying, supporting, and directing the M23 rebellion in the eastern Congo.

Rwanda has repeatedly denied the charges that it is backing M23, but Kigali has never publicly condemned the militia, which is strengthening its grip over the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu in the eastern Congo and could seriously threaten the writ of the Congolese government in the region, according to UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous.

At the end of the meeting, the ICGLR leaders proposed deploying a joint force to Goma airport comprised of a company of neutral African troops, a company of the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC), and a company of M23 rebels.

The leaders asked M23 to withdraw from their current positions to 20 kilometers from Goma within two days.

The M23 rebels defected from the Congolese army in April in protest over alleged mistreatment in the FARDC. They had previously been integrated into the Congolese army under a peace deal signed in 2009.

The mutiny is being led by General Bosco Ntaganda, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on a charge of recruiting child soldiers.

Since early May, over 750,000 people have fled their homes in the eastern Congo. Most of them have resettled inside Congo, but tens of thousands have crossed into neighboring Rwanda and Uganda.

Congo has faced numerous problems over the past few decades, such as grinding poverty, crumbling infrastructure, and a war in the east of the country that has dragged on for over a decade and left over 5.5 million people dead.