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Africa: Rice to Ease Continent's Crises
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The Monitor (Kampala)
6 December 2007
Posted to the web 6 December 2007
Evelyn Lirri & Agencies
Kampala/Addis Ababa
United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday received commitments from Africa's Great Lakes countries to stick to previous promises to end the conflict in eastern Congo which risks spilling across borders.
On her second trip to sub-Saharan African in two years, Rice met with the presidents of Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda, as well as a minister from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
They listed three areas of agreement.
They include the "rapid strengthening" of security forces in Congo, reiteration of a commitment not to "harbour negative forces" and a recommitment to previous agreements. But there appeared to be no concrete or new ideas on the table.
"The three-point plan which she summarised is a good restatement of what we have talked about before, but this time with more vigour," said Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni at a news conference with Ms Rice.
Washington wants all sides to deal with "negative forces" including the FDLR (Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda), made up of key figures in the 1994 Rwandan genocide and Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army and renegade Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda.
President Museveni thanked President George W. Bush for sending Ms 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 emanating from eastern DRC.
Ms Rice commended Uganda for pioneering the peace keeping efforts in Somalia and encouraged Burundi and other countries to join in.
On terrorist groups operating in eastern DRC, Ms Rice said the US would not want a situation where terrorist groups continue to operate from one country to destabilise the other.
President Kagame said the leaders re-committed themselves to finding resolutions of problems in the region and to continue moving positively forward.
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Mr Museveni returned yesterday.
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