Joint SADC-ICGLR summit calls for FDLR disarmament

Rwanda says it is optimistic that the government in Kinshasa, backed by a UN force with a more aggressive mandate, will turn its attention to FDLR, a Rwandan genocidal militia based in eastern DRC, following the conclusion of an armed conflict with the M23 rebels. Rwandan officials who attended a regional summit in Pretoria, South Africa, this week, say it was decided that the allied forces of DRC and the Force Intervention Brigade of the UN peacekeeping mission in the Congo should now take on FDLR, along a myriad of other militia groups in the volatile region.The meeting, which brought together two regional blocs; the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) and the Southern African Development Cooperation (SADC), was a follow up on the implementation of the UN-backed Framework for Peace, Security and Cooperation for the DRC and the Region, which was signed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in February.Speaking to The New Times from Pretoria yesterday, the Rwandan High Commissioner to South Africa, Vincent Karega, who was part of the Rwandan delegation to the summit, said that the Heads of State and Government summit resolved that FDLR should urgently be expelled from the Congo.The group has in its ranks elements who fled to the Congo after taking part in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, killing more than a million innocent Rwandans. The militia is also accused of committing grave human rights violations during its nearly 20 years of stranglehold on large swathes of eastern Congo region.“The leaders at the summit unilaterally agreed that the force that was used against M23 in the past one week should now be recommitted to fight FDLR; they should be immediately identified, disarmed and repatriated,” Karega said via phone.The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Louise Mushikiwabo, who led the Rwandan delegation, also said that the regional summit had called for immediate action against the FDLR. “The Joint ICGLR-SADC Summit urged MONUSCO tackle FDLR as a matter of urgency!” she wrote on her Twitter handle yesterday.Monusco is the acronym for the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in the Congo, under whose auspices the Force Intervention Brigade operates.Other negative armed groups that are operational in eastern DRC include ADF-NALU, a Ugandan rebel group, APCLS, FRPI, Rai-Mutomboki, Sheka, UPCP and a host of other Mai-Mai militia groups. The meeting in Pretoria, co-chaired jointly by Ugandan President and ICGLR chair Yoweri Museveni, and Malawian President and SADC chair Joyce Banda, also called on the M23 to make a public declaration renouncing their rebellion.Indeed, the group, through its political leader, Bertrand Bisimwa said in a statement yesterday that they had laid down arms and would now embark on “purely political means” to achieve the Movement’s goals. Kampala talks The M23 rebellion started in April last year when mutinous soldiers picked up arms accusing the government of President Joseph Kabila of reneging on a March 2009 peace deal that had integrated fighters from a previous rebel group, CNDP, into the regular army.The group accused Kinshasa of presiding over a violent campaign against former CNDP fighters and maintaining a discriminatory policy against Rwandophones, failure to repatriate thousands of Congolese refugees, reluctance to disarm and expel abusive foreign militia groups, including the FDLR, failure to improve general living conditions in the country’s troubled eastern region, among others.The meeting in Pretoria, attended by President Kabila, said that once M23 renounced the armed conflict, an agreement for a political settlement should be reached and signed within five days in the Ugandan capital of Kampala.Meanwhile, Karega said ICGLR/SADC defence ministers had also discussed the recent shelling of the Rwandan territory by FARDC, the Congolese army, which killed two people and injured at least nine others.“It was generally agreed that the peace process for the eastern DRC, once implemented, should do away with such problems,” the diplomat said.More than 10,000 former FDLR combatants have voluntarily returned home over the last ten years and helped to reintegrate into communities.

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Joint SADC-ICGLR summit calls for FDLR disarmament