Hi All,
Further update from Reuters
FOCUS-Draft deal puts Congo talks back on track
By Manoah Esipisu
LUSAKA, June 27 (Reuters) - Talks on ending 11 months of war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo received fresh impetus on Sunday when military officals completed a draft ceasefire document.
Congolese Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Yerodia Ndombasi arrived at the talks late on Sunday morning, signalling that the process was gaining momentum.
Officials said defence and foreign ministers from the 14 Southern African Development Community member countries plus Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda would meet later on Sunday to discuss the document.
If they approve it, a planned peace summit of African heads of state would be called for Monday or Tuesday in the Zambian capital.
The conflict in the vast interior of the former Zaire has sucked in armies from at least six African states.
Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia and Chad have given support to embattled Congolese President Laurent Kabila while Uganda and Rwanda back rebels who control huge swathes of territory in the east and south of Africa's third largest country.
The draft document, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, calls on the warring parties to "observe a troop standstill on all fronts, remaining in the positions that they occupy at the moment when this agreement comes into force".
It also provides for the deployment of United Nations and Organisation of African Unity (OAU) peacekeepers who would be given a mandate to disarm renegade forces.
These include the Lord's Resistance Army, which carries out guerrilla attacks in Uganda, and Interahamwe Hutu militiamen and former Rwandan government soldiers who orchestrated the slaughter of an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda's 1994 genocide.
Disarming these groups would be crucial to any lasting peace in the Congo as Rwanda and Uganda say their troops are there to secure their borders from attacks by them.
The document also calls for:
-- the deployment of UN and OAU peacekeeping monitors and observers within 20 days of its signing;
-- the exchange of prisoners of war within 35 days;
-- the formation of a Congolese National Army incorporating the two main rebel groups; and
-- the announcement of a timetable for the pullout of foreign forces within 101 days.
The Lusaka talks have crawled along at a snail's pace, with neither side displaying much trust in the other and a rebel split threatening to derail the talks altogether.
A senior Rwandan official said on Sunday Rwanda was convinced that 3,000 additional Zimbabwean soldiers reported to have been sent to Congo recently were Interahamwe militia armed and trained in Zimbabwe.
"We have no doubt that the people they (Zimbabwe) airlifted were Interahamwe. We have been saying for a long time that Zimbabwe was training Interahamwe," Patrick Mazimhaka, Rwanda's Presidential Affairs Minister, told Reuters in Lusaka.
Zimbabwe's Defence Minister Moven Mahachi told Reuters the Rwandan allegations were "absolute rubbish".
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