Congolese President Joseph Kabila and his Ugandan counterpart, Yoweri Museveni, signed an agreement on Saturday to immediately pull back their troops 150km from the border to ease tensions over an oil-rich border lake.
Several cross-border skirmishes last month have left at least four people dead -- three Ugandans and one British oil contractor. The Briton was killed by Congolese troops as his team conducted seismic studies from a boat on the contested oil-rich area of Lake Albert.
The two leaders agreed to work together to explore and exploit oil in the Lake Albert area and to lay a joint pipeline to distribute any oil.
Kabila and Museveni signed the agreement in the presence of Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, diplomats and the media.
They agreed that a joint team will begin work within a month to demarcate the contested area of the lake. Last month, Congolese and Ugandan officials said the exercise would determine which country owns Rukwanzi -- a small but strategic island at the southern tip of Lake Albert.
The leaders agreed to meet once a year and to raise their diplomatic missions to ambassadorial level to help improve relations.
"Black Africans are always at each other's throats," Kabila said. "We are determined to see long-term peace reign among the two countries. Next time we meet, we won't discuss about border problems, but we will be discussing developmental issues."
"What's happening is the tidying up of the mess, and today's signature of the document is an end to that long process," Museveni said.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda also agreed to move refugee camps 150km away from the border to improve security, Ugandan Foreign Affairs Minister Sam Kutesa said, reading a statement after the agreement was signed.
The presidents held a one-day meeting on Saturday after senior Congolese and Ugandan officials began talks in the northeastern Tanzanian town of Arusha on Thursday to discuss the tensions.
Last October, Museveni said Uganda had found oil in the Lake Albert area, with production expected to begin in 2009 and initial output to be between 6,000 barrels and 10,000 barrels a day.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS