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Marek News in Brief: Update on DR Congo
American Great Lakes Envoy Howard Wolpe believes "there is the political will to stop the fighting and to permit political negotiations to begin" in Africa War I in the DR Congo. Lara Pawson reported for Reuters that Wolpe is on a five-week tour of Central Africa to explore ways to end the war. Christof Maletsky reported for The Namibian that Wolpe, over the past two weeks, has been in Luanda, Kampala, Harare, Windhoek and Nairobi and will now move on to Kigali, Lusaka, Pretoria and Kinshasa. Pawson quoted Wolpe saying, "I have seen a growing pragmatism. There is a lower level of rhetoric." Wolpe said further, "The leaders are very much focused on the importance of containing this conflict and beginning to work through the underlying reasons of this conflict." While Mr. Wolpe has expressed confidence, quoted by The Namibian saying, "I have not talked to anyone who does not say, and I think with conviction, that there is no military solution," it must be noted that the has not yet been to Kinshasa and Kigali.
Mr. Wolpe's use of the phrase "containing this conflict" is especially
noteworthy, because concerns are growing in South Africa that tensions between
Angola and Zambia are rising, and there are even those who are now growing
increasingly aware that the warfare in Africa that extends from the Atlantic
Ocean northeastward to the Red Sea through Africa's heartland is having a
disastrous continent-wide economic impact and is turning international investors
away to economic safe havens elsewhere in the world. When the war in the DR
Congo began, it looked like a national war, then people quickly saw it was a
regional war, then it became clear it was a major regional conflict, now people
are starting to sense that there are continental implications, and if these
trends are left unchecked, the notion of potential continent-wide warfare would
not seem far off. If these wars were being fought in Europe. this would surely
be called a world war.
UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) spokespeople say that the number of refugees entering Tanzania from the DR Congo is increasing. There are now 33,680 refugees in the Kigoma region, all of whom have arrived since August 1998.