Rwanda, Congo Sign Peace Pact

Surrounded by Africa’s top leaders, the presidents of Rwanda and Congo signed a peace deal Tuesday to end one of the continent’s most brutal wars, a largely ignored conflict that has killed an estimated 2.5 million people in four years and involved the armies of seven African nations.

“It’s a bright day for the African continent,” declared an ebullient South African President Thabo Mbeki, who brokered the deal.

Mbeki and other African leaders were quick to trumpet the peace agreement as the first sign that Africa was ready to end the continent’s legacy of bloodshed, poverty and bad government so that it could attract billions of dollars in aid and corporate investment.

Under the deal, the Congolese government agreed to round up, disarm and return to Rwanda thousands of Hutu militiamen who helped slaughter more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus during Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. Rwanda will withdraw about 30,000 soldiers from eastern Congo.

Analysts called the deal a significant step toward ending the war but warned that a 90-day deadline for the withdrawal of Rwandan troops was too ambitious.

“It’s not logistically possible,” said Henri Boshoff, a military analyst with the Institute for Security Studies, a Pretoria-based think tank. “Getting peacekeepers on the ground to monitor the withdrawal is going to take at least 90 days.”

Mbeki, Congolese President Joseph Kabila and other African leaders seemed unperturbed by the deadline. Instead, they said that Tuesday’s deal should be celebrated because it could clear the way for the withdrawal of other armies, ending what has often been dubbed as Africa’s First World War.

The war has been fought largely in the jungles of Central Africa, and according to humanitarian aid groups, many of the victims have died of disease and starvation.

Fighting exploded four years ago when Rwanda and Uganda backed rebels seeking to oust Kabila’s father, then-President Laurent Kabila. The two neighbors, which helped to install Laurent Kabila, accused him of supporting rebels threatening their security.

Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi supported various opposition groups in eastern Congo while Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia dispatched thousands of soldiers to back the government.

Ending the Congo conflict has been a major goal of Mbeki, chairman of the African Union, which this month replaced the weak Organization of African Unity.

At the union’s launch in Durban, South Africa, Mbeki helped persuade other African leaders to adopt an economic rescue plan that commits member states to end their wars, promote democratic governments and welcome private investors. States that don’t comply could be expelled.

“In Africa, warlordism doesn’t have a future,” said Adama Gaye, editor of London-based West Africa magazine. “Those who don’t capture the mood of change will be the losers.”

Analysts said peace in Congo, the continent’s third-largest country, is key to stability in much of Africa because it shares borders with nine nations. While foreign armies have been feasting on Congo’s vast deposits of gold, diamonds, copper and other minerals, hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled to neighboring countries, further straining their limited resources.

Tuesday’s deal could also enhance Mbeki’s role as an African peacemaker. That could help him as he urges Western governments to increase their aid and investment in the continent, said Jakkie Cilliers, who heads the Institute for Security Studies.

Cilliers and other analysts say leaders of many African countries have realized that they could reap sizable peace dividends if they stop fighting. The World Bank, for example, has told Joseph Kabila that it would lend his country $450 million if he agreed to a peace deal.

More money would flow if peace flourishes, and similar benefits could be extended to other African nations embracing peace--hence recent progress in peace talks in hot spots such as Angola, Burundi and Sudan.

In the continent’s most widely followed peace talks, the Sudanese government and the nation’s main rebel group agreed this month to an interim deal that could end a 19-year civil war in which 2 million people have died, mainly from disease and starvation.

The war that erupted in 1983 has pitted Sudan’s Islamic government in the Arabic-speaking north against rebels seeking more autonomy for the largely animist and Christian south.

On Tuesday, speakers at the signing ceremony in Pretoria proudly noted that many of the peace talks now underway on the continent were African-led initiatives. However, they said the talks needed international support to succeed.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame called on the international community to help his country and Congo implement the peace deal.

“Some of these countries have historically been part of the problem [so] they cannot escape the responsibility of being part of the solution,” Kagame said.

Under the agreement, the United Nations mission in Congo, which commands about 3,000 peacekeeping soldiers, would need 3,000 more to monitor Rwanda’s withdrawal.

South Africa has pledged to contribute a battalion of 1,500 soldiers, according to Boshoff, but it is not clear who will provide the rest.

Pierre-Richard Prosper, the U.S. ambassador at large for war crimes issues, made it clear that sending American peacekeepers was not an option. Critics say the United States has shied away from sending peacekeepers to Africa since 1993, when U.S. servicemen were killed in Somalia. Prosper was speaking Tuesday in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, where he went to launch a U.S.-sponsored hunt for Rwandans who helped plan the 1994 genocide.

The peace deal and the departure of Rwandan soldiers could give Kabila an opportunity to negotiate a power-sharing agreement with the rebels, who control about one-third of the country. Kabila has indicated that he is interested in forming a transitional government before new elections are scheduled.

Analysts said the success of the peace deal would depend on Kagame and Kabila.

Both men acknowledged Tuesday that the road to peace will be difficult but said they were committed to taking the first step.

“No more blood must run,” Kabila said a few minutes before exchanging firm handshakes with Kagame, “because Congo and Rwanda are not at all interested in sacrificing the young people of the countries on the battlefield.”

The Congolese people, Kabila said, want to “live in peace so together they can face the challenges of illness, hunger and poverty.”

“One conflict less for the continent means one further step to the development the continent needs so much,” he said.

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Attempt at Peace

The Congolese conflict has been dubbed Africa’S First World War because it involved seven armies and a multitude of militias.

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War Facts

* Conflict broke out in 1998 after Uganda and Rwanda sent troops to support rebels in overthrowing Congo President Laurent Kabila.

* Anti-Kabila rebels captured one-third of the country, but Kabila received support from Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola to stop the rebels from advancing to the capital.

* According to the United Nations, the foreign armies have plundered Congo’s vast mineral resources, returning to their countries diamonds, gold and coltan, an ancient soil used to make components in cellular phones and computers.

* Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and other supporters of the Congolese government have pledged to withdraw troops when Rwanda pulls its soldiers from eastern Congo.