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Kinshasa (Agenzia Fides)- “American Pax ”, “Nkunda challenges Bush: total war in north Kivu” are some of the titles of newspaper in Congo which are giving ample space to the Summit in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia, dedicated to the Great Lakes crisis and military operations led by the Congolese army in the east of DRC against rebel general Laurent Nkunda.
The participants at the meeting which starts today 5 December at Africa Hall, where in 1964 the African Union Organisation was started (precursor of what is now the African Union), should include four African presidents: Congolese Joseph Kabila, Ugandan Yoweri Museveni, Rwandan Paul Kagame and Burundian Pierre Nkurunzinza. But it is above all the presence of the US Secretary of State Ms Condoleezza Rice, which is attracting the attention of observers of African questions.
The Congolese press says that Washington, bringing together 4 African heads of state (the president of Congo Kabila is unable to attend the summit, according to an official travelling with Rice), has decided to give maximum importance to the resolution of the crisis in the Region of the Great Lakes.
Two principal motives led the US government to intervene in this decade long crisis: a willingness to make a strategic deployment in a region which threatens to become a long term source of instability, also because it is close to the Somali powder keg, and the desire of the Bush administration to end his mandate with a series of diplomatic successes.
The US long term plans (see Fides 3/12/2007) include the eradication of “negative forces” in the region, gangs of rebels operating in the region between RDC, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda. Many are former members of Rwandan militia responsibly for the 1994 genocide. Congo and Rwanda signed an agreement in November in Nairobi (Kenya), sponsored by Washington, to render frontiers secure and to disarm the Rwandan guerrillas. In exchange Kinshasa was given permission to strike the rebels led by general Nkunda, to whom the US administration had offered exile.
However Nkunda seems little inclined to surrender and now between his troops and the regular army in North Kivu it is open war. Nkunda's men have taken the villages Kikuku and Nyanzale (a 100-130 km from the main city Goma), forcing 40,000 civilians to flee their homes. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 5/12/2007 righe 29 parole 376)
