GREAT LAKES: Fresh threat challenges new regional declaration

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

NAIROBI, 26 Nov 2004 (IRIN) - Rwanda's threat to invade the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo to flush out Hutu rebels comes less than a week after the leaders of the two nations, along with nine other countries in the region, signed a declaration committing themselves to working out their differences peacefully.

"This is a great shame," said George Ola-Davies, the spokesperson for the special representative for the UN Secretary-General on the Great Lakes region, Ibrahima Fall.

Fall shepherded the conference process, which brought about the Dar es Salaam Declaration on Peace, Security, Democracy and Development in the Great Lakes Region.

On Thursday, the UN Security Council called on Rwanda to show restraint after President Paul Kagame threatened to invade eastern Congo, claiming his country was coming under attack from Rwandan Hutus rebels across the border.

"If only the declaration's follow-up mechanisms were already in place, then situations like this could have been avoided," Ola-Davies told IRIN on Thursday.

In the declaration, the 11 heads of state committed themselves to "establish an effective regional security framework for the prevention, management and peaceful settlement of conflicts and, to this end, evaluate regularly relevant subregional initiatives and mechanisms".

However, none of these mechanisms exist.

The eastern Congo is still a base for thousands of former Rwandan combatants who took part in the 1994 genocide, although in article 24 of the declaration, the leaders agree to "deny use of any territory by armed groups to carry out acts of aggression or subversion against other member states".

According to article 82, the declaration - signed on 20 November and witnessed by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the current African Union chairman, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo - "takes effect immediately". Yet the mechanisms to implement the declaration will only begin to be worked out in inter-ministerial meetings, which are to be held in early 2005.

For some, the problem now is to get the various military and rebel groups in the region to support the declaration. They were mostly not included in the conference process.

"To me that is a major oversight," said Col Henry Nyambok, Kenya's military liaison officer for the East African Community (EAC), who was an official observer to the summit, as well as at all the preliminary meetings leading up to it.

"We are talking about stopping violence and the people who are the custodians of the instruments of that violence are not here," he said during the Dar es Salaam summit.

The conference organisers said they had no say in who took part in the conference.

"It was the duty of each government to decide who would be included in their national delegations," Ola-Davies said. "But this is just the beginning of the process that will continue with the inter-ministerial meetings."

Some opinions observe that the burden rests with the UN, in particular, the UN Mission in the DRC, known as MONUC.

In reaction to Rwanda's latest threat to invade the Congo, South African Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad was quoted by the South African Press Association on Thursday as saying, "It is a South African view that we must get the UN to move to the stage of forced disarming of the negative forces that are in the DRC."

[ENDS]