DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: Senior diplomats say genuine efforts by Congo's political players and African solidarity will resolve the war-ravaged nation's ills.

Record ID: 858638

  • Title: DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: Senior diplomats say genuine efforts by Congo's political players and African solidarity will resolve the war-ravaged nation's ills.
  • Date: 21st April 2006
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF JOURNALISTS (2 SHOTS)
  • Embargoed: 6th May 2006 13:00
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  • Topics: War / Fighting,Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVADNAHQU4ECYWHD5CC3WNL32G6U
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  • Story Text: Genuine efforts by Congo's political players, rather than foreign partners and African solidarity, will resolve the war-ravaged nation's ills, one of the continent's leading diplomats said on Wednesday (April 19, 2006).
    Alpha Oumar Konare, chairman of the African Union's Commission, also said he was confident that a veteran opposition leader would take part in up-coming polls that are threatened with a boycott but he said are necessary to change the Congolese mindset of seizing power by force.
    Congolese were due to vote on June 18 for the first time in over four decades but the date has slipped due to political wrangling and the logistical nightmare of organising elections in the vast chaotic country. Diplomats say the poll is now more likely to be held sometime in July.
    The polls are meant to draw a line under Congo's last war, which followed a rebellion in the mid-1990's to oust the late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.
    After Mobutu fled in 1997, Congo's second war erupted in 1998, sucking in armies from six neighbouring countries and sparking a humanitarian crisis that has killed some four million people, mostly from war-related hunger and disease.
    The former Malian president spent two days in Congo, holding talks with President Joseph Kabila, the four vice-presidents, two of whom are former rebels, and local and international officials helping organise the elections.
    He also met Etienne Tshisekedi, leader of the opposition
    UDPS party that has long-opposed governments in Kinshasa and is boycotting the elections, saying the conditions are not suitable for a fair election.
    While Konare acknowledged a UDPS boycott could pose some political problems, it would not detract from the legitimacy of the process or an elected government.
    Thousands of UDPS supporters marched in Kinshasa last month warning that their party's conditions for taking part must be met or the process would be disrupted.
    When Congo's elections were originally delayed last year, scores of people were killed and injured when the security services broke up UDPS-led protests across the country.
    Congo's electoral commission this week confirmed that there are 33 valid presidential candidates and 9,587 people have put their names forward for the race to fill the 500 seats in parliament.
    Continued wrangling amongst the former belligerents, ongoing fighting in the mineral-rich east and the logistical nightmare of holding a poll in a vast country that lacks basic infrastructure have long delayed Congo's transition from war to democracy.
    But each step of the electoral process, from the validation of the large numbers of applications to the organisation of the printing of some 25 million ballot papers, is also taking longer than originally thought.
    A Western diplomat told Reuters elections would most likely be held in the middle to the end of July.
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