Alfred Wasike
13 December 2007
Kampala — UGANDA and the DR Congo yesterday pledged to repair relations strained for 10 years by clashes in the late 1990s that sucked in more than nine government and rebel armies into the vast central African country.
Uganda's and the Congolese foreign affairs ministry permanent secretaries James Mugume and Leonard Lulu Ngoy said their countries had also agreed to share oil and other wealth in Lake Albert, a move designed to revive the Joint Permanent Commission of cooperation that last met in 1997 in Kinshasa.
The commission was established in 1986 to boost relations between the two neighbours. Technical teams from both countries, on Wednesday visited some oil wells, including Kaiso Tonya, Mputa 2 and Ngasa, in the Lake Albert region as a precursor to the two-day meeting at Munyonyo Speke Resort.
The meeting is a follow-up to the summit, where presidents Yoweri Museveni and Joseph Kabila signed a pact on September 8, in Tanzania's Ngurdoto resort town.
It was witnessed by Tanzanian leader Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete. The pact followed a couple of skirmishes in which an oil exploration worker was killed on the lake.
Ngoy, leading a 70-member delegation said: "We have come with open minds. We have come in good faith to repair our relationships with our brothers and sisters in Uganda.
"We are doing all in our efforts to make a report as directed by our presidents in Ngurdoto a few months ago."
Mugume said: "The fact that we have such large delegations sitting together after so many years, is very significant because we are turning a new chapter in our relationship.
"For 500 years, our people in the Great Lakes region were known to be either English or French- speaking.
"But now we acknowledge and stress that we are same peoples, belonging to the same region just divided by rivers, lakes, mountains and valleys."
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