East African leaders on Saturday called for an immediate ceasefire in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), at an extraordinary summit called to find ways of calming the raging conflict.
The talks were hosted in Burundi by the seven-nation East Africa Community (EAC), which is leading mediation efforts to end the fighting in the vast central African nation.
A resurgent rebel group known as the M23 has taken swathes of land in the mineral-rich east and fighting is continuing despite a peace road map hammered out in the Angolan capital in July last year and the deployment of an EAC force in November.
Photo: AFP
The heads of state called for an “immediate ceasefire by all parties” and the withdrawal of all armed groups, including foreign, in a statement issued after the summit.
They directed army chiefs to meet within a week to set timelines for the withdrawal, while also highlighting “the need for enhanced dialogue among all the parties.”
Present in Burundi’s lakeside economic hub of Bujumbura were DR Congo President Felix Tshisekedi and Rwandan President Paul Kagame. Kigali has been accused of backing the M23 in a conflict that has sent many Congolese fleeing their homes and exacerbated regional tensions.
Tens of thousands of people are “caught in the vice of armed violence” in the face of the recent advance of M23 rebels in the east, the UN’s humanitarian coordination office in DR Congo said in a statement.
In a statement ahead of the summit, the Congolese presidency had called for the EAC force to be made more “offensive” to tackle the rebels.
It protested that despite the terms of the Luanda road map the M23 and its allies had not withdrawn, but rather “expanded their areas of occupation.”
Kagame’s visit, his first to Burundi since 2013, also suggested some rapprochement between the Great Lakes neighbors whose relations have long been frosty.
The EAC meeting took place shortly after a visit by Pope Francis to Kinshasa, where he met victims of the conflict and condemned the “inhumane violence” and “brutal atrocities” taking place.
Militias have plagued the mineral-rich eastern DR Congo for decades, many of them a legacy of regional wars that flared during the 1990s and the early 2000s. Since November 2021, the M23 has seized chunks of territory and come within kilometers of the east’s main commercial hub Goma.
The EAC last year decided to create a military force to pacify eastern DR Congo, with the first troops arriving in Goma in November.
Kenyan President William Ruto said the security situation remained “fragile and regressing as more and more civilians bear the burden of the conflict.”
He also said there was a need for action to protect the sovereignty of DR Congo’s mineral riches, a key source of its myriad conflicts.
The DR Congo is awash with minerals and precious stones, but the decades of war and chronic mismanagement mean that little of the vast wealth trickles down to the population of about 100 million.
Kinshasa’s accusations that Kigali is backing the M23 are supported by UN experts, the US and other Western countries, but Kigali denies the charge.
Last week, Qatar had planned to host a meeting between Tshisekedi and Kagame, but diplomats said the Congolese leader refused to attend.
Tensions between the two countries were inflamed last week when Rwandan forces opened fire at a Congolese fighter jet they said had violated Rwandan airspace.
Kinshasa described it as an attack that amounted to “an act of war.”
Meanwhile, the leaders of Burundi and Rwanda greeted each other warmly in Bujumbura after years of tempestuous relations and accusations of interference in their internal affairs.
In 2020, Kagame urged the then-newly elected Burundian President Evariste Ndayishimiye to reset diplomatic ties, but his overture was rejected as “hypocritical.”
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
LANDMARK: After first meeting Trump in Riyadh in May, al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House today would be the first by a Syrian leader since the country’s independence Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the US on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency SANA reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist. Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted long-time former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House today. It is the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts. The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May. US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack earlier
RSS