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by Robert Holloway UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - The labyrinthine conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is likely to dominate a meeting of big powers during next week's UN Millennium Summit.
The full summit is expected to examine a host of topics suggested by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, including poverty, nuclear disarmament, climate change, AIDS, illiteracy, and the digital divide. But the summit-within-the-summit of heads of state and governments of the 15 members of the Security Council will focus on peacekeeping, with particular emphasis on Africa, diplomats said. They said council members were working on a draft resolution to endorse a report, which recommends far-reaching changes in the way the UN, and its member states prepare, form, equip and carry out peacekeeping missions. Deputy U.S. representative to the United Nations, James Cunningham, after the report was released on August 23rd, said, "it contains solid, and for the most part convincing, recommendations." The first test of the UN's readiness to put the proposals into effect is likely to come in the DRC conflict, which one council member said, "makes you despair." Several African leaders speaking in the general debate, which opened last September's UN General Assembly, accused the world body of a double standard to conflicts in Africa and in other parts of the world. Annan said, "Afro-fatigue is an affront to the very idea of a responsible international community." Since then, the Council has approved a force of 13,000 peacekeepers for Sierra Leone and is actively discussing a recommendation to increase it to 20,500 - almost as large as all the other current 13 peacekeeping forces put together. It is also expected to give authority for 4,000 observers to monitor the ceasefire between Eritrea and Ethiopia. But although it has already said yes to 5,500 troops to help implement last year's peace agreement signed by six countries and two rebel groups with armed forces in DRC, fewer than 300 have been deployed. Upgrading ceasefire observers to a fully-fledged peacekeeping operation in DRC, a country the size of Western Europe but with few roads, would mean tens of thousands of blue helmets. Diplomats said no country was likely to offer troops until it was certain that DRC President Laurent Kabila, his allies and his enemies, were committed to the peace agreement they signed in the Zambian capital, Lusaka. In a statement on Wednesday, the Security Council "expressed the hope that the regional leaders will be able to use the opportunity of the Millennium Summit to advance the peace process in the DRC." The Security Council was briefed by Nigeria's former military leader General Abdusalami Abubakar, the UN's special envoy to DRC, on a meeting he had with Kabila in Kinshasa. One council member later said "it looks as though Kabila is not coming to the Millennium Summit because he is afraid he will find himself in the dock." He added that Kabila had "managed to annoy just about everybody by refusing to allow MONUC [the embryonic UN observer force] in government-held areas." The presidents of Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe, Kabila's allies, are due to attend the summit, as are the leaders of Rwanda and Uganda, who back opposition committed to his overthrow. While Abubakar was in the region, Kabila's government relented on MONUC's deployment, but confusingly added that it wanted to renegotiate the Lusaka accord. Diplomats said that if Kabila failed to attend the Millennium Summit, there was little point in organizing yet another meeting of other Lusaka signatories. The alternative would be for the Security Council to issue a statement reaffirming that Lusaka is not re-negotiable, they said. |
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