During its first meeting on Friday, the newly-inaugurated ministers of the transitional government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) resolved to make resolution of the conflict in Ituri District a major priority.
“We decided to make a priority the issue of Ituri, where fighting continues despite the peace and unity that now exists in Kinshasa,” Lands Minister Venant Tshipaka, from the unarmed political opposition, said in the capital. “We plan to send as soon as possible a police force and even a combat force because we must put an end to the fighting, the rape, the robbery and other human rights violations that are being committed there.”
The new government is also due to send a consultative committee to the area.
Economically-driven ethnic strife in natural resource-rich Ituri District between Hema and Lendu militias caused between 200,000 and 350,000 people to flee when fighting worsened in May, humanitarian sources said. Due to prevailing insecurity, however, the UN Mission in the DR Congo, known as MONUC, has been unable to deploy military observers outside Bunia, while the EU-led peace enforcement mission sent to reinforce MONUC is not mandated to act outside of the town.
Friday’s landmark meeting went without incident. Public Works Minister Jose Endundo, of the Mouvement de liberation du Congo (MLC), said, “The meeting took place under peaceful and trustful conditions,” with very few bodyguards present.
“We were all guarded by the president’s security service. Only [RCD leader] Azarias Ruberwa and [MLC leader] Jean-Pierre Bemba came with their own bodyguards,” Environment Minister Anseime Enerunga, representative of the Mayi-Mayi militia, said.
“There were warm embraces between President Joseph Kabila, the leaders of the MLC and the RCD [Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie, the other major former rebel movement], and the other members of the council,” Enerunga added. “We all had a drink together, and then we gathered around President Kabila to have a group photo taken.”
All other security personnel remained at the entrance to the Cite de l’OUA building where the meeting took place. Under an agreement reached among the various parties to the DRC’s power-sharing accord, each of the four vice-presidents is entitled to 108 bodyguards, while ministers are entitled to 13 and vice-ministers to eight.
As an additional safety measure, MONUC opened on Thursday a Joint Security Operations Centre in Kinshasa for coordination of the safety of members of the transitional government.
Other decisions taken during the new government’s debut meeting included the authorisation of free circulation of people and goods throughout the country, the return to a unified currency, and the use.
