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Gold/Mining/Energy : Starpoint Gold -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: john mcknight who wrote (2283)	12/4/1999 8:17:00 AM
From: john mcknight	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2378

From NCN.. Kagame says he?ll withdraw in a heartbeat if someone provides him security guarantees The United States should provide the needed security guarantees to Rwanda, Uganda and the DR Congo, and the U.S. can provide the technical means to make this happen. This is a good job for the U.S. It can be done without significant risk to American forces, and without a significant deployment by American forces. By Ed Marek, editor, NCN December 4, 1999 There is some very encouraging news from Germany. UN IRIN reported on December 3 that Rwandan Vice-President and Defense Minister Paul Kagame, in an exclusive interview with Die Tagezeitung in Berlin, said Rwanda is willing to withdraw from the DR Congo. Mr. Kagame was quoted saying: "We have no business being in the Congo. Let it be the United Nations or anyone else - even if a single country were to replace our forces and take care of our security concerns, we would withdraw that very day." Let?s hope that the American ambassador to the UN, Richard Holbrooke, seizes this opportunity as a matter of urgency and priority. In our view, this is a significant offer by Mr. Kagame, a serious comment from a serious man. We have recommended in the past at NCN that the United States should provide the needed security guarantees to Rwanda sufficient to enable Rwanda to decide to withdraw. Since our original proposal, and with constructive inputs from our readers, we have expanded this concept to include providing the needed security guarantees to Uganda and the DR Congo as well. The U.S. can do this. It is a good job for the U.S. It can be done without significant risk to American forces, and without a significant deployment by American forces. Our vision is for the U.S. to provide all three countries with advanced surveillance and intelligence gathering technologies and assist their military forces in operating the equipment and evaluating the results. The number of American forces in such a deployment would be in the region of hundreds rather than thousands, and most of these would be technical monitoring and surveillance personnel. Together, the surveillance equipment, both ground-based and airborne, could help all sides to the present conflict spot, locate, identify and act on troop movements in the border regions with sufficient advanced warning to enable them to send rapid reaction forces to meet potential challenges. This same technology could also help all sides deal with the many roaming hostile militia as well, all with a view toward increasing stability along the border zones, all done by the Rwandans, Ugandans and Congolese from their sides of the border. This kind of operation is tailor made for the United States, and the British and Germans could be valuable partners in such an operation. All three have enormous and comprehensive experience in maintaining border security as a result of a 40 year long Cold War along the inter-German border region in Europe. The investment would be sizeable, but nothing when compared to the costs of this war, nothing compared to the costs that will be incurred if a major peacekeeping and peace enforcement force has to be deployed to the region for an extended period of time, and it would be largely an intelligence and surveillance deployment rather than a ground combat deployment. This is precisely why we make such sophisticated surveillance and intelligence gathering equipment --- to serve as a force multiplier, to save from having to deploy massive numbers of combat troops. Information in the Information Age can serve all sides to this conflict exceedingly well. We could easily develop a whole new way of solving these kinds of wars in the future --- employ truth developed from sophisticated surveillance and technical intelligence gathering means as a competitive and problem solving weapon for all sides involved in a dispute. This kind of strategy would surely empower the Joint Military Commission. The role is tailor made for American interests in the region. The truth is that the United States is a good friend with Rwanda and Uganda and wants to be a good friend with the DR Congo. This is a chance for the United States to serve as an honest broker in a fight among neighbors, each one of which is or ought to be our friends. In the case of the Congo, we Americans owe the people our respect for suffering under Mobutu during the Cold War, much suffering of which was incurred to support the American opposition to Communism. This could be a great payback, a chance to right the wrongs of the past and help the country emerge from war to join in the next century and all the opportunity it could bring them. If I were in charge, I would recommend a proposal that sends over ground surveillance radars, advanced night-vision equipment, and reconnaissance platforms with their advanced radar imaging and moving target indicator capabilities. I would also immediately deploy ground-based air surveillance radars. The ground based radar systems could be set up in the DR Congo, Uganda and Rwanda, and the reconnaissance platforms could stage from any one of the major airports in the region; perhaps Lusaka, the host of the cease-fire agreement, an acknowledged center for peace, would be a good staging base. We hope Mr. Holbrooke jumps on this offer from Vice President Kagame like a fly on ointment. He?s the kind of person who can build a proposal, sell it to regional leaders, and make it stick back here in the halls of Congress. Holbrooke could sell this idea. Holbrooke has clout. Return to Editor's Notes regards john