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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

DRC: Controversy over military leader nominees resolved

KINSHASA, 19 August 2003 (IRIN) - Former rebel movement Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma), which is now part of a two-year national transition government in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), has submitted a revised list of candidates for top military posts, thereby resolving a controversy that had delayed formation of a unified national army, Atanase Matenda Kiela, spokesman of the follow-up committee of the inter-Congolese dialogue, announced on Monday in the capital, Kinshasa.

The previous list of candidates proposed by RCD-Goma provoked an outcry from President Joseph Kabila and other members of the former Kinshasa government, as well as from the International Committee to Accompany the Transition, known by its French acronym CIAT, because of its inclusion of individuals suspected of involvement in the assassination of late president Laurent-Desire Kabila, Joseph's father.

The elder Kabila was murdered by one of his bodyguards on 16 January 2001.

CIAT, which is made up of foreign ambassadors to the DRC and the UN peacekeeping mission there, known as MONUC, had issued a statement on Saturday expressing its concern over the previous RCD-Goma nominees, noting that they included "persons of a controversial character that did not meet the demands of non-conflictive transition".

The original list submitted by RCD-Goma included Gen Bora Uzima and Col Georges Mirindi, former members of Laurent-Desire Kabila's security team who evaded arrest following his assassination.

"We have made a new concession in order to help advance the [peace] process," Azarias Ruberwa, RCD-Goma president and one of the transitional government's four vice-presidents, told reporters in Kinshasa on Monday.

According to Matenda, RCD-Goma's concession came after four hours of negotiations. He said it had been the only matter blocking Kabila's naming of military chiefs.

"In the coming hours [Kabila] will issue a decree naming the officers who will lead the armed forces and who will assume command of the military regions," Matenda said.

Under an agreement among armed former belligerents reached on 6 August, the country's 10 military regions are to be allocated 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.

Meanwhile on Monday, the follow-up committee of the inter-Congolese dialogue held its last meeting, during which it adopted its final report on the installation of the transitional national government, which will be submitted to the first session of parliament, due to be held on 25 August.

In the future, any disputes arising regarding the transition, which were previously handled by the follow-up committee of the inter-Congolese dialogue, are to be resolved by parliament.

Themes: (IRIN) Conflict

[ENDS]

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