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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

DRC: RCD-Goma rebel delegation arrives in Kinshasa

KINSHASA, 28 April 2003 (IRIN) - Leaders of the Rwandan-backed Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) rebel movement arrived in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), after more than four years of war.

"Today, we are declaring an end to the war, which lasted four years and nine months because circumstances demanded it. Today, those circumstances have ceased to exist. We bring with us a message of peace and reconciliation," said a smiling Azarias Ruberwa, the secretary-general of RCD-Goma.

Ruberwa and Jean-Pierre Ondekane, the RCD-Goma vice-president, led the rebel delegation, which was greeted by hundreds of Kinshasa residents waving palms fronds and assorted tree branches, sometimes singing songs in honour of the opposition politician, Etienne Tshisekedi, who allied himself with RCD-Goma.

The RCD-Goma delegation was also welcomed by a delegation from the Mouvement de liberation du Congo (MLC), another major rebel faction, supported by Uganda.

Ruberwa and Ondekane were scheduled to participate on Tuesday in a meeting of the national follow-up committee for the inter-Congolese dialogue, the negotiation process that ultimately led to a power-sharing agreement among the Kinshasa government, numerous armed rebel movements, unarmed political opposition movements, Mayi-Mayi militias and civil society.

The various parties to the inter-Congolese dialogue are currently in the process of assembling a national unity government.

"Our hope is that tomorrow I will be in a similar position to travel and speak publicly in Goma as you have now done here in Kinshasa, and as the MLC has already done," the commissioner-general of the DRC government in charge of the peace process in the Great Lakes region, Vital Kamerhe, said during his welcoming of the RCD-Goma delegation.

The RCD-Goma delegation, which comprised its spokesman, Jean-Pierre Lola Kisanga, and some 40 other movement members, was under the protection of a security force of 480 Ghanaian and 225 Tunisian soldiers.

Several RCD-Goma sympathisers were reportedly arrested in the streets of Kinshasa before the arrival of the delegation, according to the movement's representative in Kinshasa, Mpunga Tshibangu, while others were reported to have had their pro-RCD T-shirts confiscated by police.

"This incident cannot prevent us from striving to put in place the new institutions for which we have come to work, but we invite the government to show its good faith in this matter," said Lola Kisanga.

"We are surprised that the RCD says it has sympathisers here and wishes to be greeted by the public after having demanded high security conditions and requested to be ushered into the capital unperceived," retorted Kamerhe.

Themes: (IRIN) Conflict, (IRIN) Governance

[ENDS]

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