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Central Africa: Security Meeting Must Up Its Game
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The Monitor (Kampala)
EDITORIAL
15 September 2007
Posted to the web 14 September 2007
A two-day Tripartite Plus Joint Commission Meeting was scheduled to open in Kampala yesterday. The ministerial level meeting was to bring together Uganda, Rwanda, the DR Congo and Burundi . The commission meetings are facilitated by the United States and take place every six months. They are aimed at helping resolve conflict in the Great Lakes Region of Africa.
The Kampala meeting comes as things are flaring up again in the region. Right now, the region is reaping the bitter fruits of not doing much to rein-in armed non-state actors. The renegade Congolese general Laurent Nkunda is continuing with his clashes against the Kinshasa forces allegedly to protect fellow Tutsi in that country. The resulting violence - in the North Kivu province near the border with Rwanda - has forced up to 35,000 refugees to cross into Uganda.
To complicate things, Uganda alleges that fighters of the People's Redemption Army, a rebel outfit opposed to President Museveni's government, have joined forces with Gen. Nkunda. This can only suck Ugandan forces into those clashes hence escalating them.
As is always the case in our part of the world, it is the civilians who pay disproportionately, most times with their lives.
Before the Nkunda flare-up, there had been incidents on the Congo-Uganda border that are yet to be resolved.
The attack on Butogota in Kanungu District, and kidnappings on oil-rich Lake Albert and the attendant dispute over Rukwanzi Island do not bode well for the region.
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Much as on September 8 Presidents Museveni and Joseph Kabila agreed to jointly explore and use any oil along the common border, we are not out of the woods yet. Any trigger-happy person could throw a spanner in the works. That is why all armed non-state actors must be disarmed and state authority, especially on the Congo side, imposed. Mollycoddling will not help.
Some of these issues have simmered over time. But since the Tripartite Commission came into being in 2004, not much of a lasting solution has been found. Rwanda and Uganda are still bickering over whether the PRA exists. The last commission meeting in Kigali referred the matter to the Tripartite Fusion Cell, a joint intelligence office ran out of Kisangani, DR Congo's major city in the east.
We hope it will report real progress to the Kampala meeting. The commission needs to start showing some teeth lest it becomes irrelevant in the Great Lakes region's quest for stability.
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