Congo leader urges surrender
2002-11-20 10:07
Brazzaville - President Denis Sassou-Nguesso has urged a rebel militia force active in the Pool region bordering on Brazzaville to surrender in exchange for a guarantee of "safe passage" from the army.
However, a peace committee formed by residents of the densely forested area said on Tuesday that Sassou-Nguesso's call would fall on deaf ears and considered that a plan they have drawn up was far more likely to work.
The Pool, which stretches south and east of the capital on the right bank of the Congo river, has seen renewed heavy fighting since April between government troops and the renegade militias, who target a vital rail link and other facilities.
Sassou-Nguesso told a public meeting on Monday, attended by more than 1 000 people from the Pool, that he was giving the militiamen known as the Ninjas a month to leave their bases.
"From 18 November to 18 December, we have ordered forces of law and order - the army, the gendarmerie and the police - to open corridors in all parts of the Pool, to let the young armed men to come out and come to Brazzaville.
"As president of the republic, I guarantee the safety of the young men and their leaders who surrender to the Brazzaville authorities," said the former military ruler.
The Ninjas, led by Reverend Frederic Bitsangou, better known as Ntumi, have refused to lay down their arms since General Sassou-Nguesso, a former military ruler, seized back power at the end of a four-month civil war in October 1997.
The president, who won an election in March and saw his supporters win a parliamentary majority three months later, said that an amnesty proposed in 1999 was still valid.
The presidential appeal was dismissed as propoganda by Bonaventura Mbaya, spokesman for a peace committee set up by politicians and people from the Pool, who submitted their own peace plan to the government on November 7.
"This is pretty much propaganda. The Ninjas can't surrender after a simple appeal, they can only surrender if there is dialogue," Mbaya said after the head of state's annnouncement.
"The peace plan we put to President Sassou-Nguesso is the only way of definitively bringing peace back to the Pool," he said.
The plan, drawn up in October at meetings of about 250 people from all political backgrounds, calls for an end to the fighting between government troops and the Ninjas, the opening of talks and the creation of safe corridors to get humanitarian aid to displaced people.
The conflict has driven thousands of villagers either to Brazzaville or the neighbouring Bouenza region.
Many have fled their homes for deeper in the forest, and such relief agencies as have managed to get access to them have described their conditions as appalling.
"Forests are made for animals and not for human beings," one woman said during Monday's meeting with Sassou-Nguesso.
The president made no reference in his address to the plan drawn up by war-weary people of the Pool, which also urged the government to stop shelling the area and bombing it from the air, as well as introducing a fresh amnesty.
But Mbaya said that "we think this plan could reassure the Ninjas and put an end to the war."
Apart from the human cost, the violence has hit the economy, particularly because of attacks by Ninjas on the Congo-Ocean railway linking the capital with the Atlantic oil port of Pointe Noire.
This line, where trains move under military guard when it is functioning, is important not only for supplying the capital but as a link to landlocked central African countries to the north. - Sapa-AFP
- SAPA