By Manoah Esipisu
LUSAKA, May 21 (Reuters) - A
ministerial committee overseeing a much-violated peace accord in the Democratic
Republic of Congo began talks in Zambia on Monday on a draft plan to disarm
and resettle militias.
The Political Committee of ministers and officials met to discuss draft plans agreed on Friday by the Joint Military Commission, comprising senior military officials from countries and rebel groups involved in the 30-month civil war.
"We will review the overall progress of the peace process and examine options for accelerating it," said Patrick Mazimhaka, the official from the Rwandan president's office who chairs the committee.
The Committee oversees overall implementation of the Congo peace agreement signed in the Zambian capital Lusaka in 1999. The pact was given new life by the appointment of Joseph Kabila to succeed his assassinated father Laurent as Congo's president.
The talks began with a hitch when two delegations arrived claiming to represent Jean-Pierre Bemba, head of the rebel Front for the Liberation of the Congo (FLC/MLC). Mazimhaka and Zambian officials were trying to resolve the dispute.
The plan was also due to be given to a U.N. Security Council team which was due to hold meetings in Lusaka on Tuesday with both the Political Committee and Zambian President Frederick Chiluba, chief mediator in the conflict.
WITHDRAWAL OF FOREIGN FORCES
The team's leader, Jean-David Levitte, French ambassador to the U.N., told reporters on arrival that the next big step in the search for peace was the withdrawal of all foreign forces.
"But we have to deal with first things first, so we shall discuss how disarming and demobilising the so-called negative forces (militias) will be discussed and implemented," he said.
The armed groups targeted by the disarmament plan include the Hutu Interahamwe militia, blamed for the 1994 slaughter of some 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Others are former Rwandan soldiers, Ugandan and Angolan rebels and Congo's Mayi-Mayi militia.
The draft plan urges the disarmament, repatriation and resettlement of the militias in countries that do not share borders with their adversaries.
It calls for international agencies to screen them to see if any are suspects in Rwanda's genocide and could be prosecuted.
The draft also calls for the thousands of Congolese civilians who illegally own weapons to be disarmed. But Congo's government has objected to this, saying that task must be left to a new police force to be formed when an all-party dialogue facilitated by Botswana's ex-leader Ketumile Masire is complete.
Kabila expressed disappointment on Monday with the United Nations' efforts and said it should send 20,000 peacekeepers. Kabila's forces, supported by Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia, are fighting rebels backed by Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi.