Congo Reopens Peace Mediator’s Sealed Office

Reversing a decision that threatened to undermine efforts to end Congo’s civil war, the Congolese government said Friday that it had reopened the office of the mediator responsible for bringing the country’s warring factions together.

But the government remains opposed to former Botswanan President Ketumile Masire, who was chosen in December by the warring parties to lead national talks aimed at establishing a broad-based government in Congo, the country’s justice minister, Mwenze Kongolo, said.

“We have discovered that he’s been partial, and we want someone impartial,” Kongolo said in a telephone interview from the Congolese capital, Kinshasa. “We are still committed to the inter-Congolese dialogue with an impartial facilitator.”

Armed police on Wednesday sealed Masire’s office in Kinshasa, sparking protests from the Organization of African Unity and the U.N. Security Council, which called for it to be reopened immediately. The council on Thursday deplored the failure of President Laurent Kabila’s government to cooperate in ending the war, which now involves at least five neighboring countries.

Kongolo attributed the closing of the office to a “misunderstanding” among low-level police.

“The police understood it as an end of the whole role of the facilitator, so they went and closed the whole office. This was done at a low level of the police. When the government was informed, the president himself instructed the ministry of Interior to reopen it,” he said, confirming that the office had been reopened Friday afternoon.

The justice minister said the office staff was welcome to return--but not Masire.

The Congolese government has accused Masire of bias and repeatedly blocked his work.

Under the peace agreement signed last summer in Lusaka, Zambia, by Kabila and his rebel foes, a neutral facilitator was to organize talks among the warring factions to set a timetable for elections, determine what kind of government Congo would have and who would be its president.