[allAfrica.com] [Africa_2004] Dos Santos 'Orders Halt to Expulsions' of Diggers SouthScan (London) NEWS May 14, 2004 Posted to the web May 19, 2004 Angola's President Jose Eduardo dos Santos has ordered a halt to the forced expulsion of thousands of Congolese diamond diggers, according to press reports. The announcement, after a meeting with the DRC's foreign minister in Washington, came after Angolan troops had entered the Congo as part of their expulsion drive. Tens of thousands of Congolese diamond diggers have been expelled from Angola since the beginning of the year, leading to protests from the Congolese side. On Tuesday (May 11), the interim governor of the Lower Congo province, Emmanuel Ndombi Maboti, called a meeting with the vice-consul of Angola, Martins Fernandes, and the migration police chief in the Angolan province of Zaire and made an official protest against the recent "invasion" of a Congolese village by the Angolan army. The incident came just one week after a meeting in Luanda between Angolan and Congolese officials on security at the common border. The meeting will be followed with another on May 20 between the governors of the Congolese border provinces of Bandundu, Lower Congo and Western Kasai and their colleagues from the Angolan provinces of Lunda Norte, Cafunfu and Zaire. This came after the meeting on Wednesday (May 12) in Washington between Dos Santos and the Congolese foreign minister, Antoine Ghonda, when, according to the Congolese independent news agency APA, Dos Santos said he had ordered a halt to the expulsions. The situation has been creating unease in Kinshasa, where 200 members from the 'Voice of the Voiceless' human rights group organised a sit-in in front of the Angolan embassy on Tuesday to protest against the "massive and brutal" expulsions of their compatriots and to ask for the dismissal of the Angolan ambassador in the DRC for his allegedly "discourteous" words about the DRC. Meanwhile, the governors of the Congolese Katanga province and of the Angolan province of Moxico also met on Tuesday with their colleague from Zambia's north-western province to sort out border problems. They were also preparing for the reopening of the Angola-DRC border between the cities of Dilolo (DRC) and Luao (Angola), and the reactivation of regional trade. Earlier in Luanda, a joint Angola-Congolese commission examined ways and means of promoting co-operation in the energy and transport sectors. Angola agreed to send back to the DRC 49 railway wagons, and the DRC reportedly agreed to reimburse what it owed to Angola. Rwanda border tension While Angola and the DRC are repairing the situation on their borders, the tensions are more serious on the Rwandan side. The Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, threatened in a radio broadcast on May 3 to send back troops to the DRC if the Kinshasa government and the UN Mission in the Congo (MONUC) failed to prevent the Rwandan Hutu extremists of the 'Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda' (FDLR) attacking his country (SouthScan v19/09). The Congolese minister of information, Vital Kamerhe, immediately criticised the Rwandan president's statement but the Kigali authorities have been unrepentant and called the recent arrest of a genocide suspect in the DRC merely a "symbolic" gesture. Twelve of the 14 people wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for their alleged roles in masterminding the systematic slaughter of between 800,000 and a million people are hiding in DRC, ICTR prosecutor Hassan Bubacar Jallow said on Wednesday in Arusha, the northern Tanzanian town where the court sits. It does seem, though, that there is increasing willingness on the Kinshasa side to curb FDLR activities. On 8 May the US embassy in Kinshasa congratulated the DRC government for the capture of a Rwandan genocide suspect, Yusuf Munyakazi. A FDLR liaison officer called Etienne Usubimurenye was arrested the same day in Bukavu, the capital of the DRC's Southern Kivu province. According to the assistant secretary general of the Congolese Rally for Democracy (CRD), Crispin Kabasele Tshimanga, the suspect was carrying documents showing that the FDLR planned to launch an attack against the Congolese army, then cross the Burundian border and eventually try to capture several Rwandan villages. A second attack was to be launched from the Northern Kivu area of Rutshuru against Rwanda. Four brigades of 6-800 men each were supposed to execute the plans. Other evidence of Kinshasa's new attitude was the fighting which took place in late April and early May between Congolese troops and the FDLR rebels. At least 78 people died in several incidents. The heightened unrest in the Kivus has caused concern in Washington, where last Thursday a tripartite meeting between the foreign ministers of Rwanda, the DRC and Uganda was supposed to take place. A week earlier, the UN Security Council had voiced its concern at the escalation. Indeed, a third focus of tension is the DRC-Uganda border. On 10 May a Ugandan army spokesman declared that a new rebel group called the People's Redemption Army (PRA) led by a defector from the Ugandan People's Defence Force, Colonel Edison Muzoora, was threatening to attack the country from bases in the Ituri district of north eastern Congo. Allegedly, these rebels are trying to combine forces with the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), another Ugandan rebel group which operates from DRC territory. Uganda's pro-government paper New Vision reported on 10 May that the PRA rebels were training in Boga, Kayinamura and Kamongo in the DRC, near the Ugandan district of Bundibugyo. The problem is that the DRC government is still far from controlling this area. There has been recent fighting between the UN peacekeeping troops and a Lendu militia called the 'Front of Integrationist Nationalists' (FNI) during which at least ten militiamen were killed. The former enemies, the FNI, the Hema 'Union of Congolese Patriots' (UCP) and the Armed Forces of the Congolese People formed in February a united front called the 'Front for the Pacification and the Integration into Congo' (FPIC) whose main aim is to exert pressure on the UN and the Kinshasa government to obtain government jobs for their leaders. But apparently, the UN troops have decided to crush the rebels. According to local reports they used attack helicopters and fired at least 80 rockets at the rebels in an incident last week. Meanwhile, rebel leaders of the two wings of the UCP, led respectively by Thomas Lubanga and and Floribert Kissembo and other Ituri militia leaders (FNI, PUSIC, FRPI and FPDC) were trying during talks with the government in Kinshasa to boost their chances in the transitional institutions.   =============================================================================   Copyright © 2004 SouthScan. All rights reserved. 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