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Museveni Asks Kabila to Deal With Rebels

The Monitor (Kampala)
NEWS
December 15, 2006
Posted to the web December 15, 2006

By Evelyn Lirri
Kampala
PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni has urged Mr Joseph Kabila, the president of the
Democratic Republic of Congo to deal with the myriads of criminal forces in his
country.
Addressing delegates at the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region
in Nairobi yesterday, president Museveni said that the recently concluded
general elections in DRC only solved 50 percent of the problems in the Great
Lakes Region because there are several negative criminal groups on the DRC
territory including the Lords' Resistance Army.
"We have waited for the elections in the DRC. We now want the government to
solve the problem,"Museveni said.
He said most of the criminal forces in the DRC are groups linked to former
dictators like Idi Amin and Milton Obote who fled to Sudan, and later DRC,
after the NRA took power.
President Museveni urged member states of the great Lakes Region to review the
draft pact on security, stability and development.
The draft, he said should allow member states to intervene if a member state
voluntarily habours criminals threatening the security of another member state.
Museveni congratulated Kabila upon his election. He said having emerged
victorious among 33 presidential candidates was not a mean achievement. He also
congratulated Kabila's main rival Jean Pierre Bemba for conceding defeat saying
that the DRC was not going away.
"If you do not win today, go back and organize, you can win the second
time,"Museveni said.
Adding that the people of DRC chose a cheap process to democracy rather than
using the guns, which he described as expensive.
According to Museveni, the biggest problem in the Great Lakes Region is the
lack of a transition from peasantry society to a middle class society, saying
that unless this is addressed, conflicts will continue to occur.
He said that in 1995, over I million genocidiares fled from Rwanda into the DRC
and for four months, the Mobutu government did nothing and this caused war in
the Great Lakes region that sucked in several African countries.


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