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Vowing support for peaceful DR Congo polls, Security Council urges all sides to follow

22 September 2006 – The Security Council today pledged its commitment to peaceful elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) next month, urging all sides in the second round of polls to follow suit, while the country’s new National Assembly – its first elected legislative body in more than four decades – was formally inaugurated.

“The Security Council… stresses its commitment to the peaceful conduct of the second round of the presidential election and of the provincial elections scheduled for 29 October 2006,” the 15-member body said in a presidential statement. In the first round of elections on 30 July, President Joseph Kabila received 44.8 per cent of the vote to Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba’s 20 per cent.

“The Security Council calls on all political parties and in particular President Kabila and Vice-President Bemba to restate their commitment to the peace process and to work within the framework they have agreed to establish with the facilitation of MONUC as a means of peacefully resolving political differences,” it said, referring to the UN mission in the country.

The Council also deplored the violence that erupted in Kinshasa in August between security forces loyal to President Kabila and Vice-President Bemba, and also shares “serious concern… regarding the unchecked circulation of weapons and armed individuals” in the capital, while backing a call for the cantonment of the security forces of both candidates.

Meanwhile on the ground, the top UN envoy described the inauguration of the new National Assembly as a “remarkable achievement.”

Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Special Representative William Lacy Swing said the new lawmakers must play a key role in steering the country towards stability and economic recovery after a six-year civil war and he reiterated the UN’s commitment to assisting the Congolese people through this crucial and historic transition.

The Assembly was elected in the July poll that was the largest and most complex vote the UN has ever helped organize, as part of a mission to cement the DRC’s transition from the disastrous war, which cost 4 million lives through fighting and attendant hunger and disease, widely considered the most lethal fighting in the world since World War II.

The Assembly is the first democratic institution to be installed under the new Constitution.