African leaders making another attempt to end Congo war

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (Reuters) -- South African President Thabo Mbeki and leaders from six other African states meet in Mozambique on Wednesday for yet another summit to try to end the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Maputo talks are a follow-up to a meeting held there late last month and comes 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's spokesman Nazeem Mahatey told Reuters the talks would assess the progress achieved at previous meetings to try to revive a peace accord signed in Lusaka in 1998, which both sides in the conflict have repeatedly violated.

"The Maputo summit is about getting the Lusaka Accords implemented. It will be a follow-up to previous meetings on the issue," Mahatey said.

The leaders invited to the talks include host Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano, Rwanda's Paul Kagame, Uganda's Yoweri Museveni, Angola's Jose Eduardo dos Santos, Namibia's Sam Nujoma, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and Congo's Laurent Kabila.

At last month's Maputo talks, also chaired by Mbeki, the five African armies fighting in Africa's third largest nation agreed to withdraw their forces from current positions.

Under the terms of that deal, Kabila allies Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia agreed to pull their forces back at least 15 kilometers (nine miles).

Uganda, which backs rebels fighting to overthrow Kabila, also agreed to the 15-kilometer pullback, while Rwanda, which supports another rebel group, said it would withdraw 200 kilometers (120 miles) from its current positions.

That deal was never implemented and instead fighting has resumed in northern and southern Congo between the rebels, government forces and their respective allies.

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

Another 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 disarm and dismantle exiled Hutu rebels based there.

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 failure because the rebel groups fighting Kabila were never consulted.

The rebels were not invited to the first Maputo summit, the Libyan talks and have not been invited to Wednesday'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.

"And, because the rebels feel they are not a part of these decisions, fighting continues on the ground," he added.

All countries involved in the war signed a peace deal in the Zambian capital Lusaka last year to end the conflict. But fighting has continued unabated.

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

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