African Congo summit postponed

PRETORIA, South Africa (Reuters) -- South African President Thabo Mbeki said on Tuesday an African summit scheduled for Wednesday to try to end war in the Democratic Republic of Congo had been postponed so more leaders could attend.

Mbeki told Reuters at his official guest house in Pretoria that the talks in the Mozambican capital Maputo would be held as soon as the presidents agreed on a date that suited them all.

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"We will hold the meeting in the next few days but a postponement was necessary in order to allow all the heads of state involved to attend," he said.

"All the presidents want to attend but most of them had other commitments on Wednesday," Mbeki added.

He said the Maputo talks would seek to address the question of all foreign troops withdrawing from the former Zaire in order to allow a United Nations peacekeeping force to deploy in Africa's third largest country.

The Maputo talks are a follow-up to a meeting held there late last month and come a week after another summit in Libya agreed on a plan to send "neutral African forces" to end the multi-sided war in the Congo.

Mbeki said it was his understanding that the Libyan initiative sought to reinforce other regional initiatives seeking to end the war.

"I think it is all part of Africa saying let's do something about the Congo. Let's end the war," he said.

Congo's President Laurent Kabila and the leaders of the five African countries fighting in the former Belgian colony have been invited to the summit.

Under the terms of a deal at last month's Maputo talks, also chaired by Mbeki, Kabila's allies Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia agreed to pull their forces back at least 15 kms (nine miles).

Uganda, which backs rebels fighting to overthrow Kabila, also agreed to the 15-km pullback, while Rwanda, which supports another rebel group, said it would withdraw 200 kms (120 miles).

But the deal was never implemented and instead fighting has resumed in northern and southern Congo.

Rwanda, Uganda and the rebels control the northern and eastern parts of the former Zaire. The western half of the Congo is still held by Kabila and his supporters.

The deal hammered out by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi last week involves an African military force being deployed to protect the Rwanda and Uganda borders and to disarm exiled Hutu rebels, who took part in Rwanda's 1994 genocide.

According to the plan, Ugandan, Rwandan and other foreign forces also would withdraw from Congo at an unspecified time.

But a senior analyst at the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies (ISS) told Reuters that Congo's peace initiatives were doomed to fail because the rebel groups fighting Kabila were never consulted.

The rebels were not invited to the first Maputo summit or the Libyan talks and have not been invited to this week's meeting.

"This is a major problem because it simply means that decisions taken at these summits are not binding on the rebel groups," said ISS analyst Jakkie Potgieter.

The U.N. Security Council authorized 500 observers -- along with 5,000 troops to protect them -- to monitor the deal, but fighting has so far prevented the deployment.

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