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The U.N. Security Council on Saturday praised Congolese President Joseph Kabila's vision for the country while urging a key rebel group to disarm and participate in talks to bring peace to the war-ravaged region. During an hour-long meeting with Kabila at the Presidential Palace, Congo's leader told council members that the military situation in the east is already improving, France's U.N. Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert said.
"Our feeling - and the feeling of the president - was that it was improving because every day you have some militias who are surrendering. So the process is giving good signs, and the improvement of relationship with both Uganda and Rwanda certainly will help," the French ambassador said.
Ripert, who is leading the council visit to Congo, said Kabila is putting all his weight behind a Security Council resolution which specifically calls on the FDLR to disarm.
The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Rwanda, known by its French acronym of FDLR, is an extremist Hutu militia accused of orchestrating the 1994 genocide of half a million Tutsis in Rwanda. The militia fled to the forested hills of eastern Congo after being chased out of neighboring Rwanda and has set up bases in the remote jungle.
The militia is accused of razing villages and terrorizing the local population. Their continued presence in eastern Congo has given rise to countermilitias, like the brutal forces of Laurent Nkunda, an ethnic Tutsi warlord whose popularity is derived from his claim of protecting villagers from the FDLR.
The two armed groups and several other smaller militias are at war now over the forested area, a conflict that has caused a mass exodus of villagers from their homes.
Ripert said that Kabila has agreed to meet and talk with the FDLR, a crucial first step toward peace.
The U.N. Security Council, he said, is urging the FDLR to disarm and talk to Kabila.
The Security Council is often highly critical of governments and individuals and it is rare for its members to talk about a leader having "vision."
"I was struck by the fact that he certainly is a politician who has a vision for his country," said Ripert. "His vision is a vision of improving the security and the first step in the short-term (is) to get the rebel groups to disarm, to get the rebel groups to leave the country."
The council arrived in Kinshasa Saturday morning, the seventh day of a cross-continent trip to African hotspots. Representatives of the U.N.'s most powerful body immediately went into a round of meetings with senior Congolese officials including the president and prime minister.
Last year, Congo installed its first democratically elected president in over 40 years, prompting many to think the country had turned a new leaf. But President Kabila has struggled to assert control over the Europe-sized country, especially its remote east where rebel armies are still entrenched.
The country's history of armed struggle has also left deep rifts in the capital, Kinshasa.
Former warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba came in second during last year's historic election and for days he refused to admit defeat. He was later elected to the senate, but riled the country's leadership by refusing to dismantle his personal militia of several hundred men.
A clash between his men and government forces forced him to flee to Portugal, where he was recently arrested on war crimes charges by the International Criminal Court.
Written By EDITH M. LEDERER
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