- Title: KENYA: Congo rebel, government talks stall
- Date: 11th December 2008
- Summary: NAIROBI, KENYA (DECEMBER 10, 2008) (REUTERS) MEDIATOR, FORMER NIGERIAN PRESIDENT OLUSEGUN OBASANJO SITTING DOWN FOR NEWS CONFERENCE UN DELEGATES LOOKING ON (SOUNDBITE) (English) MEDIATOR, FORMER NIGERIAN PRESIDENT OLUSEGUN OBASANJO, SAYING: "Either they give the people they have sent here, the delegation, the power to make decisions or they send people who they will gi
- Embargoed: 26th December 2008 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Kenya
- Country: Kenya
- Topics: Domestic Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA56IV88FNXUG3QUFLL6MVA94GY
- Story Text: Eastern Congolese rebel negotiators are delaying progress in talks with the government due to their limited authority to make decisions and attempts to broaden the discussions, the mediator said on Wednesday (December 10).
Olusegun Obasanjo, a former Nigerian president who is the United Nations special envoy for the conflict said the rebel representatives at the talks needed to be given the power to make key decisions and complained that the rebels in Nairobi have tried to broaden the scope of the talks, beyond the east.
"Either they give the people they have sent here, the delegation, the power to make decisions or they send people who they will give such power to, that's number one. Number two, they need to modify their demands that they want to negotiate on behalf of the whole of DRC we in fact have said eastern DRC, that is not acceptable to them," said Obasanjo.
"Is the government side more flexible than the CNDP side? Yes I will say by large, they are empowered to take decision and we have seen them taking decisions on the ground," Obasanjo said.
Obasanjo said the talks in Kenya had not collapsed but he was sending a team to meet Tutsi rebel leader Laurent Nkunda in Congo to resolve the problem.
"With all these people as well as the AU and the UN in search of a way forward in the interest of durable peace that the people of the DRC so fully and rightly and earnestly desire. We cannot relent efforts to secure peace for the DRC," said Obasanjo.
Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) has seized large tracts of North Kivu in fighting since September.
They declared a ceasefire shortly before they reached the provincial capital of Goma and called for direct talks.
President Joseph Kabila's government initially resisted fresh negotiations, saying that previous peace processes should be respected, but eventually agreed to sit down with the rebels.
The Nairobi meetings are the first face-to-face talks since Nkunda launched his rebellion in 2004, initially to protect fellow Tutsis in eastern Congo from attacks by Rwandan Hutu rebels who crossed into Congo after the 1994 genocide.
Having routed Kabila's weak and chaotic army across North Kivu in weeks of fighting, Nkunda has broadened his rhetoric and now talks of a broader rebellion and has threatened to march on the distant capital, Kinshasa.
The Nairobi talks are the latest in a series of attempts to end violence that stems from Rwanda's genocide, has seen two wars and continues today, despite successful elections in 2006 and the world's largest U.N.
peacekeeping mission.
About 250,000 people have been displaced in fighting since the end of August alone. Over five million have died in the humanitarian disaster since the beginning of the 1998-2003 war, which sucked in six neighbouring countries. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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