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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

DRC: Agreement reached on division of military zones

KINSHASA, 7 August 2003 (IRIN) - Former belligerent parties reached agreement on Wednesday on the division of military zones in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

"The agreement we reached will enable President Joseph Kabila to name, very soon, the chief of staff of the unified national army as well as other leaders of the military forces," Atanase Matenda Kiela, spokesman for the Follow-up Committee of the Inter-Congolese Dialogue, said.

The committee is a body in which all parties to the Congo's power-sharing accord are represented.

"The Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) made an important concession in finally accepting the division of military regions that we proposed," Matenda added.

Azarias Ruberwa, leader of the RCD-Goma former rebel movement and one of four vice-presidents of the country's two-year transitional government, announced on 1 August that his group was ready to accept the two military regions it had been offered under a plan for a unified national military.

RCD-Goma had previously refused the plan, claiming it would throw the balance of power in favour of the former government of DRC President Joseph Kabila, who replaced his father after he was assassinated in January 2001.

That plan, now accepted by all parties, would allocate control of the DRC's 10 military regions as follows:
three to the former Kinshasa government;
two to RCD-Goma and the Mouvement de liberation du Congo (MLC), another major former rebel movement;
and one region each to RCD-Kisangani/Mouvement de liberation (RCD-K/ML) and RCD-National (RCD-N), two smaller former rebel movements, and to the Mayi-Mayi militias.
[See earlier IRIN story, "Confusion remains over partition of military regions"]

The formation of a national army unifying the forces of the former Kinshasa government and those of the various rebel movements had remained one of the final stumbling blocks to allowing the two-year transitional government, inaugurated on 30 June, to move forward.

In return for its proposed concession, RCD-Goma demanded that its military officers be posted as deputies in other regions.

Matenda said it was also agreed that only the primary former belligerents - the former Kinshasa government, RCD-Goma and the MLC - would be entitled to deputy posts in military regions other than their own.

"There will be four deputy posts for the former government, four for the RCD-Goma and three for the MLC," he said.

Theme(s): (IRIN) Conflict

[ENDS]

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