DRC peace agreement set to be signed
2013-02-18 07:45
New York – The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will attend
a signing ceremony next week in Addis Ababa for an accord aimed at pacifying
the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, his spokesperson said on Sunday.
Ban's spokesperson, Martin Nesirky, told AFP that
invitations for the ceremony went out on Friday.
"He intends to be at the event on 24 February in Addis
Ababa. All the invited presidents have committed to either be there or delegate
power to sign," he said.
The DRC, Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Angola, Congo, South
Africa and Tanzania are expected to sign the framework agreement, after
refusing to do so at an African Union summit in Addis last month.
The UN officials have said that the disagreement had not
been over the content of the agreement, but over procedural concerns.
Back-to-back wars ravaged Eastern DRC from 1996 to 2003. The
region is home to a complex web of rebel groups and militias battling for its
mineral wealth.
The security plan would toughen the existing UN peacekeeping
mission in DRC with a 2 500-strong "intervention brigade" to tackle
the "March 23 Movement" - an insurgency that the United Nations says
is backed by Rwanda and Uganda, which they deny.
The troops will be charged with tackling all armed groups
that have terrorised the resource-rich region over the past 15 years, and with
neutralising the threat of the armed groups through targeted operations against
command and control structures in specific sites.
Latest cycle of unrest
The DRC's mineral-rich east has long been caught up in
strife among local and foreign armed groups. Since May, the army has been
fighting the insurgency.
The M23 was founded by former fighters of an ethnic-Tutsi
rebel group whose members were integrated into the regular army under a peace
deal whose terms they claim were never fully delivered. The group's main demand
now is the full implementation of the March 23, 2009 accord.
The M23 controls part of the Rutshuru region, an unstable
territory rich in minerals and agricultural produce that borders on Rwanda and
Uganda. The M23 briefly seized the key city of Goma in November.
Several of its leaders have been hit by UN sanctions over
alleged atrocities. The group has been accused of raping women and girls, using
child soldiers and killing civilians.
The latest cycle of unrest in eastern DRC erupted last year
when the rebels seized Goma, a mining hub, before pulling out 12 days later.
Peace talks have been held in Uganda, but have made little headway.
The peacekeeping mission already deployed in DRC, Monusco,
is one of the UN's biggest. It currently has about 17 000 troops and, under its
Security Council mandate, is allowed to have up to 19 800.
- SAPA
