Mbeki heads to DRC

2005-01-12 13:18

Yamoussoukro - President Thabo Mbeki left Ivory Coast on Wednesday for the Democratic Republic of Congo for talks on the post-war transition process in the vast central African country, officials said.

Mbeki is to meet with President Joseph Kabila, to discuss the elections scheduled for June, the country's first democratic polls since independence in 1960, South African officials said earlier.

At least four people were killed and 60 arrested in Kinshasa on Monday during violent protests over rumours of a government plan to delay the vote.

South Africa brokered a peace deal for the DRC in April 2003 which ended years of warfare and set up a transitional government to rule until elections are held.

The 1998-2003 war in DRC, which drew in half a dozen other African states at its height, has left an estimated 2.5 million people dead, either in combat or through disease and hunger, according to aid organisations.

Mbeki had arrived in the troubled Ivory Coast on Tuesday to take stock of peace efforts in the divided west African country, where he has been appointed African Union (AU) mediator in the conflict which has been boiling since 2002.

He took part in an extraordinary cabinet meeting with President Laurent Kabila and Prime Minister Seydou Diarra, but the meeting was shunned by ex-rebel members of the government of national reconciliation.

Earlier, Mbeki attended a meeting of AU leaders gathered for a Peace and Security Council summit in the Gabonese capital, which discussed the Ivory Coast crisis and the post-war transition process in the DRC.

- AFP