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Great Lakes Region to Freeze Negative Forces

The New Times (Kigali)
NEWS
March 11, 2007
Posted to the web March 11, 2007

By Charles Kazooba
Kampala
Great Lakes parliamentarians have been encouraged to expedite the ratification
of the regional Pact on Security, Stability and Development. The MPs from the
International Conference on the Great Lakes Region during a recent meeting in
Kinshasa were told that the ratification would engineer the expulsion of
negative elements from the region. A Ugandan lawmaker, Onyango Kakoba, who led
the Kampala delegation to the three-day meeting that started on February 26,
said the implementation of the pact would start soon after the ratification.
"We want all the member states to ratify the pact so that it is enforced. But
the most important component is to enforce the provision that demands a state
to expel armed groups fighting other member states from their territories,"
Kakoba told a news conference at parliament early in the week.
The protocol on Non-aggression and Mutual Defence, which was one of the most
contentious instruments debated at the conference, states that members of the
Great Lakes Region abstain from sending or supporting armed groups onto the
territory of other member states. It further discourages hosting insurgents
fighting others.
The International Conference on the Great Lakes Region comprises of Rwanda,
Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, DRC and Congo Brazzaville.
The others are Angola, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Zambia and Sudan.
At the opening ceremony the host, President Joseph Kabila, renewed his
government's will to respect all commitments of the pact signed in Nairobi late
last year.
Eastern DR Congo hosts several internationally blacklisted armed groups
fighting neighbours. They include the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of
Rwanda rebels linked to the 1994 genocide and the Lord's Resistance Army that
has fought Uganda for the last 21 years.
During the presentation of the Peace and Security dimensions of the pact, a
joint African Union/ United Nations secretariat asked the parliamentarians to
seriously consider joint management of security at common borders.
The secretariat said the strategy would help set up a collective security
architecture in the twelve identified security zones.


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