Hellen Mukiibi and Agencies
5 December 2007
Kampala — THE US and the Great Lakes states have agreed to rapidly strengthen DR Congo security forces in their drive against rebel and foreign forces operating in the eastern part of that country.
At the end of a one-day Great Lakes' Region Tripartite Plus Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, yesterday said the US would not want a situation where terrorist groups continue to operate from one country to destabilise the other. She provided no details on how the security forces would be strengthened.
The summit that addressed challenges posed to the region by negative forces operating from Congo, was attended by presidents Yoweri Museveni, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi and Dennis Kalume, the Congolese interior state minister, who represented President Joseph Kabila.
The meeting was intended to develop common strategies to deal with what has been termed as "negative forces" including Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army, the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda, made up of key figures in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and Congolese renegade General Laurent Nkunda.
The talks in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa were held amid an offensive by the Congo government forces against Nkunda's forces in the east of the country.
At a joint press conference with the regional leaders, Rice said "everyone believes that the strengthening of the security institutions of the DRC is a prerequisite for the long-term solution to the problems of the Congo and the problems that are, therefore, affecting the entire Great Lakes region."
The Great Lakes region has been wracked by violence since the early 1990s with the civil war that began in Burundi in 1993, the Rwandan genocide in 1994 and the regional war that raged in the Congo between 1998 and 2003.
According to a statement issued from State House last evening, Rice said the US believed in the strengthening of the established joint verification mechanisms as well as MONUC in order for the UN force to execute its mandate.
Speaking at the joint press conference in Addis Ababa, Museveni thanked US President George Bush for sending Rice to the region to convene the meeting to deal with residual problems of the Great Lakes region. He said the meeting laid down thorough mechanisms for handling regional problems caused by insecurity from the eastern DR Congo.
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