[House Hearing, 106 Congress] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: THE LUSAKA PEACE ACCORDS AND BEYOND ======================================================================= HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA OF THE COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION ON __________ SEPTEMBER 28, 1999 __________ Serial No. 106-67 __________ Printed for the use of the Committee on International RelationsU.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 61-318 CC WASHINGTON : 2000 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office, Washington, DC 20402 COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York, Chairman WILLIAM F. GOODLING, Pennsylvania SAM GEJDENSON, Connecticut JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa TOM LANTOS, California HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois HOWARD L. BERMAN, California DOUG BEREUTER, Nebraska GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American DAN BURTON, Indiana Samoa ELTON GALLEGLY, California MATTHEW G. MARTINEZ, California ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey CASS BALLENGER, North Carolina ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey DANA ROHRABACHER, California SHERROD BROWN, Ohio DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois CYNTHIA A. McKINNEY, Georgia EDWARD R. ROYCE, California ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida PETER T. KING, New York PAT DANNER, Missouri STEVE CHABOT, Ohio EARL F. HILLIARD, Alabama MARSHALL ``MARK'' SANFORD, South BRAD SHERMAN, California Carolina ROBERT WEXLER, Florida MATT SALMON, Arizona STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey TOM CAMPBELL, California JIM DAVIS, Florida JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EARL POMEROY, North Dakota BILL LUTHER, Minnesota WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York ROY BLUNT, Missouri BARBARA LEE, California KEVIN BRADY, Texas JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York RICHARD BURR, North Carolina JOSEPH M. HOEFFEL, Pennsylvania PAUL E. GILLMOR, Ohio GEORGE P. RADANOVICH, California JOHN COOKSEY, Louisiana THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado Richard J. Garon, Chief of Staff Kathleen Bertelsen Moazed, Democratic Chief of Staff ------ Subcommittee on Africa EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman AMO HOUGHTON, New York DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey STEVE CHABOT, Ohio ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida TOM CAMPBELL, California GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York GEORGE RADANOVICH, California BARBARA LEE, California TOM TANCREDO, Colorado Tom Sheehy, Subcommittee Staff Director Malik M. Chaka, Professional Staff Member Charisse Glassman, Democratic Professional Staff Member Charmaine V. Houseman, Staff Associate C O N T E N T S ---------- WITNESSES Page The Honorable Howard Wolpe, U.S. Department of State............. 3 William Zartman, Director of African Studies and Conflict Management, Johns Hopkins University........................... 18 Mwabilu Ngoyi, President, Congolese Internatioanl Union.......... 21 Kanyand Matand, Vice President, Congolese International Union.... 21 APPENDIX The Honorable Howard Wolpe, U.S. Department of State............. 36 Dr. William Zartman.............................................. 44 Mwabilu Ngoyi.................................................... 52 The Honorable Benjamin A. Gilman, from the State of New York, Chairman, Committee on International Relations................. 63 The Honorable Edward Royce, form the State of California, Chairman, Subcommittee on Africa............................... 65 Additional Material Submitted: Letter from President Frederick Chiluba, Republic of Zambia...... 34 Platform of ``Congolese Mothers for Peace'', Peace Crusade....... 66 THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: THE LUSAKA PEACE ACCORDS AND BEYOND ---------- Tuesday, September 28, 1999 House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Africa, Committee on International Relations, Washington, D.C. The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:45 p.m., in room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ed Royce (Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding. Mr. Royce. This hearing of the Subcommittee on Africa will now come to order. We will ask the Members to take their chairs. Since this Subcommittee last heard from the Administration on the Congo crisis, a peace agreement has been agreed to by most of the belligerents. Hopefully, the Lusaka Accords is the first step of what will be probably a long and complex process of bringing peace and stability to the Democratic Republic of Congo and its neighbors. Today, the Subcommittee will hear about the 2 month-old peace agreement from the Administration and also from outside observers. The Administration announced last week that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will travel to Africa in mid-October. It is my hope that the Secretary's trip will focus on laying the foundation for a robust American engagement in attempts to resolve this conflict. ``African solutions to African problems'' should not be a license for America's disengagement from this difficult region. American engagement is expected, considering that in 1997 Secretary Albright said that we must do better because Africa matters and that no place matters more in Africa than the Great Lakes. The Secretary went on to say that achieving a lasting peace in this region will be as difficult as implementing the Camp David agreement and as complex as sustaining the Dayton Accords, yet the rewards were surely as great, and success, the Secretary told us, success no less important to us. I recall these statements by our Secretary of State in the spirit of urging the Administration to make good on its commitments to the region. Being engaged means using the power we have, including the World Bank, including the International Monetary Fund, the leverage that we have there. This requires that the United States be willing to point the finger at uncooperative parties. Being an honest broker does not mean being mute in the face of violations of this agreement. A year ago at a Subcommittee hearing on this crisis, I raised difficult issues of foreign intervention and territorial integrity that I wasn't sure the international community was handling well. I am still troubled by the military presence of Uganda and Rwanda on Congo's sovereign territory. These concerns have been heightened by the fact that these countries are now plundering Congolese resources. One observer has made the point that this war is now a triumph for the economic entrepreneur. This development is profoundly troubling for the region and beyond. The U.S. Institute of Peace has just come out with a study on the Congo conflict. This report suggests that the current peace agreement represents, in their words, a last exit on the region's highway to hell, unquote. This is strong language but it conveys a needed sense of urgency. Africa does matter and deserves our attention. Unfortunately, many of the goals that this Subcommittee and the Administration have sought to help Africa achieve, including the prevention of genocide, are in serious jeopardy in the region. Now, before we go to our witnesses and our opening statement by our Ranking Member, I thought I would just introduce in the audience the Speaker of Nigeria, Speaker of the House, Naaba U. Ghali, if he would stand at this time. Mr. Speaker, welcome. We have with him the Majority Leader, Mohammed Wakil, if you would stand, Mohammed, and with them is a delegation of parliamentarians from Nigeria and cabinet members, and I would ask them all to stand at this time, if you would. On behalf of Mr. Payne, Mr. Hastings and myself and the other Members who have made recent trips to Nigeria, let me say that the U.S. Congress is closely watching developments in Nigeria, and I think many of us are encouraged by the progress they have made, and we want to be supportive. I thank you very much for coming to our hearing today. And with that, let me turn to our Ranking Member, Mr. Payne of New Jersey. Mr. Payne. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and let me too welcome the distinguished delegation from the Republic of Nigeria, and we are all very pleased about the progress that is being made there with your new government, or President, Chief Obasanjo, and you have all of our support and well wishes for continued progress. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for calling this very important meeting today on a hearing of the Lusaka Accords and the Congo. It is very gratifying to see a person who has spent so much time, my former colleague Honorable Harold Wolpe, who has done tremendous, good work in that region and continues to be a person that has so much to contribute, and we appreciate that. We held a hearing you will recall last year, and I remember Ambassador Rudasingua of Rwanda testifying at that time, and he said that the Congo problem is not one of ethnicity. I do believe, however, the crisis is based on these two fundamental problems, as he stated: One, the failure to fill the vacuum left by the era of the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, in essence, leadership voided at its highest levels; and second, the use of Congo by various insurgent groups to destabilize neighboring states. Ostensibly, the imminent threat of a resurgence of genocide is still there. Let me say that I never thought I would see the day that two good friends in the Horn, Ethiopia and Eritrea, would go into battle, but I never thought I would also see two friends, Rwanda and Uganda, also fall on the same path. I think we need to get tougher on countries that breach the peace and sovereignty of other countries. In that same light, I think we need to deal with the real threat to security in the region. I am concerned by the recent fighting on Congolese soil between insurgents from Burundi with members of the FDD and the Palipehutu, and I am concerned about what is going on internally in Burundi, because the parties are not signatories to the Lusaka cease-fire agreement. This spells disaster for all parties that did sign the document in good faith. Let me say that this war has wide implications for all of Africa. As we know, Congo borders nine countries, and since the war in the Congo, the wars in the region have either started, resumed or escalated as in Angola, as in the Congo-Brazzaville and as in Burundi. Moreover, many of them are havens for the genocidaiers, as exemplified in the Central African Republic, and some are just too weak to sustain this type of massive warfare. In conclusion, I would like to read excerpts from a letter from President Chiluba of Zambia. He has been chairing the mediation efforts on the conflict in the DRC since September 8th, 1998. He says, ``the people of Congo need peace, and it is the duty of all of us in the international community to help them achieve it by ensuring that a cease-fire agreement is implemented fully and urgently. The United States has a significant role to play in mobilizing the support and resources required by the United Nations to send peacekeeping forces to the Democratic Republic of Congo.'' I would like to request that the letter from the President of Zambia be inserted into the record in its entirety. [The Letter from President of Zambia appears in the appendix.] Mr. Royce. Thank you, Mr. Payne. We will do that. Well, we do want to welcome and commend Ambassador Wolpe for his commitment and for his hard work. Dr. Howard Wolpe is the President's Special Envoy to the Great Lakes Region. Dr. Wolpe, while he was a Congressman from Michigan, was Chairman of this Committee for some 10 years, and in addition to his accomplishments in Congress, he is also an author of various articles and books on Africa, also on American foreign policy and the management of regional and ethnic conflict. So we want to welcome him back to this Committee. Mr. Royce. Ambassador. STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE HOWARD WOLPE, SPECIAL ENVOY FOR THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE Ambassador Wolpe. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. It is very good to be back before the Subcommittee. I will offer an abbreviated opening statement so that there might be maximum time to entertain your questions. I would ask that the full text of the statement that has been submitted be entered into the record. Given the recent cease-fire agreement that has been reached at Lusaka among the various parties at war in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the deployment of the first United Nations officers to the region, this hearing provides a timely opportunity to take stock both of recent developments in the Great Lakes crisis and of American policy toward the region. It bears repeating that the war in the DRC is the widest interstate war in modern African history and that it has significant consequences, not only for 50 million Congolese, but for the peoples of all nine countries on the Democratic Republic of Congo's periphery. The United States has been deeply engaged in the search for a diplomatic resolution of the Great Lakes crisis because of our recognition of the enormous dangers posed, for Africa and for American interests, by a widening of the war and of the zone of political instability. Ethnic violence has been a feature of recent conflicts in central Africa, and this most recent Congo crisis is no exception. Thousands of innocent civilians have been killed in the DRC, and interethnic killings and even the resurgence of genocide in the Great Lakes region are ever-present dangers. Much is riding on the successful implementation of the recently finalized Lusaka cease-fire agreement. This agreement provides the first regionally authored and internationally sanctioned road map for the region's political future, a coherent, principled and comprehensive framework that addresses the principal causes of the Great Lakes crisis. Given the complexity of the issues, the multiplicity of actors and the deep mutual mistrust and suspicion among the principal antagonists, the implementation of the Lusaka Accord will inevitably be a messy process. Few, if any, deadlines will be met, and every phase will encounter a number of serious obstacles. Yet, it is hard to imagine any alternative framework that would stand a better chance of resolving the underlying fundamental issues. It would be tragic if the Lusaka signatories were to walk away from their agreement, or if Lusaka would fail to attract the international political support and concrete economic and technical assistance that its implementation will require. The significance of Lusaka lies in its identification of four core elements that, from our perspective, are key to a sustainable resolution of the Great Lakes crisis. First, the Lusaka agreement takes as a starting point the affirmation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the DRC and of all of the surrounding states. All of Lusaka's signatories accept that at the end of the day all foreign troops will be withdrawn from Congolese soil, the authority of the central government will be restored throughout the country, and the belligerent Congolese armed forces will be combined into a national, restructured and integrated army. There will be no partition of the DRC. Second, Lusaka recognizes the imperative of a credible, neutrally facilitated, inclusive political process to resolve the internal Congolese crisis. One of the most important elements of the Lusaka agreement is the commitment of the Congolese parties themselves to enter into political negotiations that have as their goal national reconciliation and a new political dispensation. Most important, the Lusaka agreements stipulate that these negotiations are to be fully inclusive, involving not only the government and the rebel groups, but also the unarmed political opposition and civil society. Significantly, too, all of the participants shall enjoy equal status. Mobutu's legacy to the DRC is an institutional and political vacuum. There is an urgent need in the DRC to reconstitute a national political system, and this will be possible only under conditions of security and an inclusive, democratic, internal dialogue. The principal political formations in the DRC must all be at the table, able to speak and advocate freely. All efforts at coerced unity, either by armed rebel movements or by the Kabila government, are doomed to fail, and will invite only more conflict and violence. Third, the Lusaka agreement commits its signatories to cooperate in addressing the common security concerns that underlie the Great Lakes crisis. Specifically, the signatories undertake, and I am quoting, ``to put an immediate halt to any assistance, collaboration or giving of sanctuary to negative forces bent on destabilizing neighboring countries.'' They pledge to take all necessary measures to secure normalization among their borders, including the control of illicit trafficking of arms and the infiltration of armed groups. We welcome this collective commitment because it goes to the heart of both the war in the DRC and the broader regional crisis. As long as insurgent groups are able to use Congolese soil for launching attacks against countries that border the DRC, regional peace and stability will be unattainable. It is in the interest of all regional states to make a serious and combined effort to secure their common borders. And fourth, the Lusaka cease-fire agreement commits the signatories to work jointly to address the security problems posed by the continuing activities of forces identified with the 1994 Rwandan genocide. No Great Lakes conflict has been more intractable and more destabilizing than the bloody confrontation between Tutsi and Hutu in Burundi and in Rwanda. In 1972 an estimated 150,000 Burundian Hutus were the victims of a genocide executed by Tutsis. Then, in 1994, well over half a million Rwandans, mostly Tutsi but also including Hutu moderates, were slaughtered in the genocide organized by the Hutu Government then in power. It is difficult to overstate the continuing traumatic impact of that event for Rwanda and for the region. The failure of the international community to respond at the time of the genocide meant that its survivors were literally left to their own devices, a conclusion only strengthened by the international community's subsequent refusal to act against the genocidal killers who took effective control of the internationally financed refugee camps in the DRC. In the Lusaka agreement, the signatories go beyond a rhetorical condemnation of genocide to stipulate that there shall be a mechanism for disarming militias and armed groups, including the genocidal forces. A regional Joint Military Commission made up of belligerent parties themselves is empowered to work out mechanisms for the tracking, disarming, cantoning and documenting of all armed groups in the DRC and for putting in place appropriate enforcement measures. Clearly, the disarmament of the various insurgent forces operating within the DRC is easier said than done. There was no subject more hotly debated in Lusaka, and there remain a great number of unanswered questions about precisely how and by whom this process will be organized and executed. But one should not discount the political significance of this first collective regional commitment to mount such an effort. All the parties to Lusaka recognized that the ultimate withdrawal of all foreign forces from the DRC would hinge upon the region's ability to neutralize the security threat posed by the various insurgencies and, particularly, by the Rwandan ex-FAR and Interahamwe. Significantly, the Lusaka agreement combines the threat of coercive measures for those who would refuse to lay down their arms with incentives for voluntary disarmament and repatriation. Recognizing that lasting stability in the Great Lakes region requires democratization and reconciliation not only in the DRC but also in its neighboring countries, Lusaka calls upon the countries of origin of the insurgent fighters to help create conditions that would encourage their voluntary repatriation. Mr. Chairman, the Lusaka cease-fire agreement is a complex document, leaving open as many questions as it answers, and it is clear that implementation will be neither neat nor swift. Nonetheless, the Lusaka accord is a vitally important beginning, embracing all of the critical elements of a sustainable resolution of the Great Lakes crisis: respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all of the regional states; the establishment of credible and inclusive transitional institutions and processes within the DRC; a commitment on the part of all regional states to work cooperatively to secure their common borders and to ensure that the DRC is no longer used as a base for launching insurgent attacks; and a regional determination to join in neutralizing the genocidal threat of the Rwandan ex-FAR and the Interahamwe. The region needs a stable DRC, a DRC that has sufficient administrative and military capacity to ensure that insurgent groups will not operate with impunity on Congolese soil. That stability cannot be imposed from without. No Congolese rebellion that is clearly understood to be dependent upon its external patrons will acquire political legitimacy among the Congolese people. Continued occupation of Congolese soil will lead to heightened hostility and interethnic conflict, threaten to widen rather than contain cross border attacks and regional warfare, and invite the animus of a broad swath of Africa and of the international community. A stable DRC will emerge only from a credibly inclusive political process, such as that prescribed by the Lusaka agreement, that will enable the Congolese to claim control of their own destiny and political future. In Lusaka, the Kinshasa government made a number of difficult but important concessions. But the Kinshasa government is currently sending very mixed messages. On the one hand, Kinshasa continues to affirm its interest in moving forward on the internal dialogue, explicitly welcoming the proposed neutral facilitation of the national dialogue. On the other hand, continuing arrests and harassment of party and human rights activists and a new decree that appears to permit open political activity only within the framework of the government-sponsored People's Power Committees, suggest a continued effort to restrict open debate and to manipulate the negotiating framework. The United States will continue to appeal to Kinshasa to abide by both the spirit and the letter of the Lusaka Accord. Arbitrary actions by Kinshasa authorities only exacerbate political tensions and make more difficult the flexibility and compromises that will be required on all sides. Let me now say a few words on immediate next steps. Now that all the belligerent parties have signed the Lusaka agreement, implementation can begin, and among the critical next steps are the following: Finalizing the membership of the Joint Military Commission, by resolving the debate within the RCD as to who will be its representatives on the Joint Military Commission. Second, identifying a neutral facilitator for the Congolese internal dialogue. Third, completing the initial United Nations deployment. The U.N. security council has authorized the deployment of up to 90 military liaison officers to the DRC, to Lusaka and to the capitals of the warring nations. Their mission will be to determine how the United Nations might most effectively assist the Lusaka signatories with the implementation of the cease- fire agreement. Now that all the parties are formally signed on to the cease-fire and the cease-fire generally appears to be holding, U.N. military liaison officers are being deployed to the belligerent capitals, to Lusaka and to 15 locations within the DRC itself. Their neutrality and expertise, we believe, will strengthen the peace process and help the JMC, build its capabilities and confidence for its day-to-day management of the cease-fire. And fourth, the immediate next step, deciding on how and by whom both peacekeeping and peace enforcement tasks will be executed. Any firm conclusions on the appropriate size and mandate of a follow-on peacekeeping presence must await the report of these liaison officers and of a related assessment mission that Secretary-General Annan intends to send. But it is virtually certain that the Security Council will reject the Lusaka signatories' urging that a U.N. peacekeeping force be empowered not only to monitor the cease-fire and withdrawal of foreign troops, but also to engage militarily insurgent fighters that refuse to lay down their arms. While the Security Council may generally support a Secretary General's recommendation for deployment of U.N. observers, under Chapter VI of the U.N. charter, it most probably will insist that the Joint Military Commission, that is, the belligerent parties themselves, retain the enforcement responsibility. The fifth immediate task is securing the appointment of a United Nations Special Representative. Appropriately, it has been the Southern African Development Community, SADC, and especially Zambian President Chiluba, that have taken the lead in facilitating a cease-fire agreement. But the OAU, United Nations, the European Union, United States and other countries have all been deeply involved in supporting the Lusaka diplomacy, encouraging the belligerent parties to be flexible, and working to narrow differences in perception and understanding. Now that a cease-fire agreement has been reached, sustained international engagement with the Great Lakes peace process will be more important than ever. The pending appointment of a United Nations Special Representative for the Congo will provide a means of coordinating both the international diplomatic support and the technical and financial assistance that effective implementation of the Lusaka Accord will require. Finally, a word about the areas requiring international support and assistance. There are at least seven distinct areas that are distinguishable. First, continued diplomatic engagement with the parties to the conflict. The deep suspicions and mutual distrust that characterize interstate relations within the Great Lakes will require continuing third party assistance and encouragement to overcome. Second, deploying U.N. observers. It is virtually certain that the Secretary General will recommend the deployment of U.N. observers under Chapter VI of the U.N. charter, and while final decisions must await the pending United Nations reports and close consultations with the Congress, as the President indicated some months ago the United States is inclined to support an appropriately sized and mandated mission. Third, establishing an enforcement mechanism. The enforcement responsibility will almost certainly remain with the Joint Military Commission and a contemplated military task force that will be established under its aegis. This regional multinational force, to be comprised of troops from belligerent, and possibly non-belligerent, countries may seek a United Nations mandate. While we would consider supporting that mandate, any such force would have to be funded through a mechanism such as voluntary contributions to a trust fund rather than through expenditure of the U.N. funds. The Lusaka signatories will be counting on international financial and logistical support. Fourth, Congolese internal negotiations. The Congolese participants in this process will require the sustained encouragement and assistance and, at times, the political pressure of the international community. Fifth, the Congolese transition, elections and reconstruction. Once the negotiations are concluded and the transitional institutions are in place, a massive effort will be required to launch the DRC on the path to democratization and economic reform. The DRC's World Bank trust fund will need to be reactivated as a quick disbursing mechanism for vitally needed local development assistance; bilateral donors will have to step up to the plate to assist the DRC in addressing its long term development challenges, and the international financial institutions will need to be fully engaged in reconstructing the economy. At the same time, the transitional DRC government will have to do its part in upholding the rule of law, in protecting the human rights of its citizens, and in making clear its commitment to honest, transparent, democratic and accountable government. Sixth, an international conference on the Great Lakes. Once the inter-Congolese political negotiation is concluded and reformed transitional institutions are functioning, the regional states may welcome new mechanisms, such as an International Conference on the Great Lakes, that might facilitate greater regional collaboration on issues of common concern. Seventh, the International Coalition Against Genocide. Regional leaders and President Clinton, at their Entebbe meeting in March 1998, agreed to explore the creation of an International Coalition Against Genocide, a coalition that would seek to mobilize the resources of concerned states in a systematic effort both to enforce anti-genocide measures and to prevent a recurrence of genocide in the region. The Lusaka agreement gives the concept of an International Coalition Against Genocide immediate relevance. The coalition could become a forum for more effective coordination of international efforts to support the anti-genocidaire provisions of the Lusaka agreement. Mr. Chairman, the regional states at Lusaka were able to transcend the mutual suspicions and antagonisms of the moment to develop a common vision of the way forward, but Lusaka is only the beginning of a beginning. As difficult as it was to achieve agreement, the effective implementation of the Lusaka Accord will pose far more formidable challenges. A rocky road lies ahead, and considerable patience, courage and creativity will be required on all sides. The United States will also have to remain fully engaged, joining with others in the international community in providing both diplomatic encouragement and material assistance as the peace process evolves. Either we are prepared to invest now in Great Lakes conflict resolution, taking advantage of the opportunity provided by the Lusaka Accord, or we will be required to pay far more later in responding to much more costly humanitarian, economic and political disasters. We intend to continue working with our African partners in their collective undertaking to establish peace in the Great Lakes region. We see American engagement not only as a moral imperative but also as in our own national interest, as it is in the interest of the global community, to support efforts to build stable, democratic and economically self-reliant nations. Mr. Chairman, that concludes my opening statement, and I thank you for your attention. [The prepared statement of Ambassador Wolpe appears in the appendix.] Mr. Royce. Thank you, Ambassador Wolpe. Let me ask you a couple of questions if I could at this point. Last September we had Assistant Secretary of State Susan Rice with the Committee, and she said that the United States condemns any violation of Congo's sovereignty and territorial integrity. In your testimony you mention that the U.S. policy is to assure the territorial integrity of the Congo. Yet critics say that the United States has acquiesced to Uganda and Rwanda's military intervention in Congo, and now we have a peace agreement that formalizes their security role in Congolese territory, which is a fairly substantial compromise of sovereignty. Have we publicly condemned Uganda and Rwanda for their military intervention in Congo, and if we have not publicly condemned, why have we not done so? Ambassador Wolpe. Mr. Chairman, we have in fact condemned the intervention of Rwanda and Uganda in the Congo as a violation of the fundamental principles of the U.N. charter and of the OAU Charter, and we have expressed both in diplomatic channels and publicly our determination to see the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Congo restored. The agreement to which you refer, I would not characterize the Lusaka agreement as somehow constituting an extension of the violation of the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity. To the contrary, the Lusaka document could not be more explicit in affirming those fundamental principles and in making clear that there is a timetable for the total withdrawal of all foreign forces from the Congo. There are other issues that need to be addressed if that resolution of the Congolese conflict is, in fact, to be sustainable, and so the Lusaka Accord also recognizes other issues that underpin the conflict, most notably the operation of insurgent forces from within the Congo directing attacks against other nations of the region. Sovereign countries have an obligation to prevent such attacks that can jeopardize the security of their neighboring states. So we have a number of agendas, a number of objectives that we and the Lusaka signatories together are seeking to achieve: restoration of the sovereignty, territorial integrity of the Congo; prevention of the resumption of any genocide and holding accountable genocidaires; and finally, securing the borders of the Congo and of all of the neighboring states. Mr. Royce. Well, I noticed, Ambassador, that we had made comments in generalized terms. I had not noted that we had been specific, but if we are being specific, I think that is a step in the right direction. My second question I would ask is, you know, the World Bank suspended aid for Congo pending a cease-fire, and the World Bank aid to Ethiopia and Eritrea has been suspended because of their war. Why was the World Bank aid to Rwanda and Uganda not suspended to get them to the table? Ambassador Wolpe. I think that the answer to that is Rwanda has met a number of the World Bank criteria. What the Rwandans have done with respect to responding to the 1994 genocide is rather remarkable. I believe that it makes sense that effort be sustained, and I think that the World Bank has been focused on assisting the efforts at reintegrating those who had moved out of the country. The efforts at addressing issues of justice, of moving beyond the genocide to national reconciliation, are efforts requiring support. But I cannot speak of course for all of those who were involved in the World Bank determination and decision. But from an American perspective, these are among the objectives we seek to advance in Rwanda. We also seek to assist the region and encourage the region to collectively begin to work together to address the problem of insurgencies that have been mounted from within the Congo, to address once and for all time, the lack of full accountability for those who directly inspired the 1994 genocide. Those objectives, we think, are meritorious as well. Mr. Royce. I concur, but my point here is in using leverage to make certain we reach that objective and being prepared to use that leverage. Another question I was going to ask about was a report by Reporters without Borders, which is a Paris based media freedom watchdog group, and they stated last week that more than 80 journalists have been locked up for varying lengths of time since President Kabila took power in May 1997. Indeed, our delegation was there in May 1997, and while we were there, there was a reporter who was arrested and locked up at that time, and this is only one example of political oppression by the Kabila government. Is the U.S. Government weighing in on this and on other government offenses against political freedom in Congo? Ambassador Wolpe. The answer, Mr. Chairman, is yes. We have done so diplomatically. We have spoken to our concerns publicly. We have done so today as you will note from the testimony that I have presented. We believe that the only hope for the Congo is to develop the conditions that can permit a fully inclusive and open debate about the Congolese future that is conducted by the Congolese themselves. Actions that appear to be designed to threaten those with divergent viewpoints are enormously counterproductive. We are hoping that the government and all of the parties will work to create an atmosphere that can ensure that the national debate can produce the kind of decisions that will be fully accepted by the Congolese population and become a basis for the kind of inclusive transition that is the only hope for a stable Congolese future. Mr. Royce. Very good. Another question I wanted to ask you, Ambassador Wolpe, and this will be my last question, but there have been press reports that North Koreans are at the Likasi uranium mine in Congo, and let me ask you if that is significant and if we have a confirmation on those reports about North Korean activity at those uranium mines. Ambassador Wolpe. We have seen reports of a North Korean presence of perhaps a few hundred people. Today I cannot give you any precision the location or the nature of those activities, but we have seen those reports. Mr. Royce. And my question about the significance of this, given some of our concerns, for those of us that serve on the Asia Subcommittee as well and are monitoring the situation in North Korea, our government, I take it, is monitoring this situation with respect to whether uranium is leaving the country? Ambassador Wolpe. I assume that is the case, Mr. Chairman, but that dimension is a bit beyond my own expertise here. It is certainly very much on the radar screen generally. Mr. Royce. OK. Well, thank you, Ambassador Wolpe. I will turn to our Ranking Member, Mr. Payne, at this time. Mr. Payne. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ambassador Wolpe, for that very comprehensive report. Some of the concern I have is about the Joint Military Commission, and if you could try to clarify the Joint Military Commission, and I think in the original is still a part of the Accord, that a force would be made up of all of the belligerents, and this force would go to try to disarm the Interahamwe and ex-FAR, and this would precede a United Nations contingent, because the U.N. would be under Chapter VI and not Chapter VII as in Kosovo and East Timor and all of that. So the difference between peacekeeping and peace enforcing of course is a vast difference. And finally, if this force does not come about and much of the problem in the region is a security concern of Rwanda with the cross border infliction from the ex-FAR and the Interahamwe, then would you conclude that if all fails there would be a continued pursuit of ex-FAR and Interahamwe by the forces of Rwanda? Ambassador Wolpe. Thank you, Mr. Payne, for some very important questions. Let me clarify a few of the elements of the Lusaka agreement as we understand them. First of all, the JMC, the Joint Military Commission, is led by a political Committee that is comprised of two representatives of all of the belligerent states. It is contemplated that under the auspices of that JMC there will be eventually constituted a regional military force comprised not necessarily only of belligerent states; it is conceivable that other nations would become part of that force. The distinction as between the regional African force and the United Nations peacekeeping force, is less in terms of sequence and more in terms of function. The United Nations peacekeepers would have the functions of observation; of monitoring the cease-fire, the withdrawal of troops, the separation of forces. If an enforcement action becomes necessary, that would be a function of a different force, and one of the issues that would have to be addressed in this two- managed approach would be the integration of the two operations. It is not unprecedented, but that is the way it would work. The other thing I would say is that it is not just the ex- FAR and Interahamwe that would be the subject of enforcement if that becomes necessary. In fact, the Lusaka agreement specifically identifies a number of forces that would have to be disarmed under the terms of this agreement, including some of the Sudanese supported anti-Ugandan insurgent forces, including UNITA operations in the Congo if there were any, including the Burundian FDD rebel force and so on. The other comment I would make is that the other signatories are hoping and anticipating that much of the disarmament activity may occur without the need for a coercive of response. That is why there is language within the Lusaka Accord calling upon the countries of origin of the insurgent groups to help establish conditions within their own countries that would encourage voluntary repatriation and reintegration. The answer to your last question is that clearly the greater the regional cooperation, and the deeper the regional commitment to make disarmament of these insurgent forces an achievable objective, the lesser will be the danger that there will be a continuation of the conflict that has been so destabilizing. Mr. Payne. Well, thank you very much. I will yield the rest of my time. Mr. Royce. We are going to go to Mr. Hastings of Florida. Mr. Hastings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for holding this hearing. Congressman, Ambassador, friend, Mr. Wolpe, thank you for the extremely comprehensive report that you gave us. I would like to ask you to respond to queries put with reference to whether or not the resources are being extracted from the land in the Congo by forces who do that kind of mining. The Chairman put to you the question about Korea, but are Congo and Rwanda involved at all in exploiting diamond resources, other resources in the Congo at this time, to your knowledge? Ambassador Wolpe. I think there is some evidence that virtually all of the countries that have entered the Congo have either engaged in some immediate direct exploitation, sometimes as a matter of entrepreneurial activity by local military people, other times as a matter of government policy. Clearly, a number of the countries that are engaged in the Congolese conflict are contemplating or anticipating a gain at the end of the day, if not immediately, through the exploitation of the Congolese resources. There has been a lot of that kind of free occupation, I think, on the part of all the states that are involved. Mr. Hastings. All right. Thank you very much. Let me go and ask you if you would have in hand your page 8 of your statement and testimony submitted to us and the final three paragraphs where you deal specifically with the United States and the Great Lakes. Let me walk through that with just a couple of questions with you, if you would be so kind, and a final one of dealing with the suggestion that you made with reference to a trust fund for any support that may come. I don't know personally, and I am not questioning that, whether precedent exists for that within the framework of the United Nations or the international monetary system, and if so, I would like to know what it is. But before that, when you say the United States will also have to remain fully engaged, my question is what are our intentions regarding engagement beyond your personal jurisdiction and that of the Under Secretary and others who have demonstrated commitment in this Great Lakes region? Additionally, when you say that we should join with others in the international community in providing both diplomatic encouragement and material assistance as the peace process evolves, my question is, are we going to join with others or are we going to enjoin others, enjoin meaning are we going to lead other people to join since people look to America or are we just going to wait for something to develop and then say that we are supportive? And in addition thereto, when you talk in terms of material assistance, what is the material assistance that we are willing to provide, and what shape would that take? And I agree with you, either we need to invest now in the Great Lakes conflict resolution or we are going to invest a lot more later on. I know what shape the later on takes, but what do you mean when you say that, invest now? I understand you say that's what we should do, but what? Ambassador Wolpe. Thank you very much, Congressman Hastings. I want to take you back to the beginning of the Kabila government. If you will recall, even then we were fully cognizant of the enormous importance of the Congo, a country which is bordered by nine states. What happens in the Congo will impact greatly upon all of southern, eastern and central Africa and, therefore, impact upon Africa and American interests in the region. So we were hopeful at the time of the ouster of Mobutu that a new set of possibilities had come upon the scene. We wanted to help that process succeed, and so we were among the leaders in urging the creation of a World Bank trust fund that could become a means of quick disbursing assistance to the Congo. We and others fully intended to participate. We established an assistance mission, several different offices in fact, within the Congo to work at the local level, to help build capacity, to help encourage the transitional process, and we made very clear that our fundamental desire was to have sufficient stability within the Congo as to permit a fully engaged effort in assisting with the reconstruction and the development of the Democratic Republic of Congo. I put all of that in historical context to say that our policy, and our sense of importance that we would attach to developments in the Congo, remain the same. That is why I was revisiting here the things we had wanted to do then. Unfortunately, developments on the ground in the Congo made that impossible. Either here with significant concerns with respect to human rights violations, or the economic policies that were being pursued by the government were problematic to say the least. Even as we speak, the government has not moved to implement the economic plan that had been presented to the Friends of the Congo meeting that had taken place in Europe in early 1998, which was the basis for the establishment of the trust fund. Any kind of effective international partnership requires a partner. That is why I stress, even as I indicated our intention to reengage, once you have transitional institutions in place that have some structure and some substance and some stability, it will still require Congolese to be good partners. They will have to establish the conditions of governance and human rights and in terms of economic policy, that will enable our assistance to make a difference. Mr. Hastings. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Royce. Thank you, Mr. Hastings. Thank you, Ambassador. We are going to go to Mr. Tancredo, and then to Mr. Meeks and then to Mr. Campbell. Mr. Tancredo of Colorado. Mr. Tancredo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ambassador Wolpe, thank you very much for your testimony. You indicated that you believe there would be close cooperation, I think those were your words, close cooperation or consultation with the Congress regarding any potential for United States support or participation in a peacekeeping operation in the Congo. Would you tell me, sir, how you come to that information or knowledge? Is it just your observation what would probably happen? And then second, if you could help me out by describing in more detail exactly what you think that close cooperation will actually look like. Ambassador Wolpe. I am not sure I quite caught the thrust of your question. Are you referring to cooperation with Congress? Mr. Tancredo. Yes, cooperation with Congress. Ambassador Wolpe. What I was saying is we cannot move forward without congressional support, and as the phases of this process evolve, decisions with respect to peacekeeping will be made in the closest consultation with the key Committees of the Congress that are involved in this area. That is what I meant to say. Mr. Tancredo. OK. In consultation with the Committees. Well, along those lines, if all the parties to a conflict are not in agreement, and certainly in the Congo there are groups who will never apparently support the Lusaka agreement, then isn't any peacekeeping operation a Chapter VII operation by definition? Ambassador Wolpe. No, you could have a Chapter VII mandate extended to a regional force. That is what has happened in East Timor and that is what has happened in Kosovo. Effectively, rather than establish a Chapter VII United Nations force, a unmandate is extended to a regional force. That is how you would address the enforcement dimension in the Congolese conflict. The direct United Nations force would operate under Chapter VI with a more limited mandate. Mr. Tancredo. I see. Thank you, Mr. Ambassador. I have no other questions. Mr. Royce. We go to Mr. Meeks of New York. Mr. Meeks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this hearing. Mr. Ambassador, I want to pick up somewhere where Congressman Payne was talking about. I am interested in trying to have peace in the Congo, and based upon the Lusaka peace agreement, where the U.N. is to be involved with reference to overseeing what is going on there. From my understanding, and I don't know whether you mentioned this prior to me coming in, there has not been any guarantees of the safety of the U.N. observation mission in the Congo and that it, therefore, has not deployed any personnel to any combat zones, and I understand there is at least 20 or so liaison officers that have arrived in Kinshasa last week and they are still awaiting to meet the Congolese officials. I was wondering if you could shed any light on why the delay and what is happening there. Ambassador Wolpe. Sure. Thank you very much, Mr. Meeks. The process of deployment of United Nations military liaison officers has been delayed in part because of the failure of one of the rebel groups to resolve the issue as to who should sign the final document. Those signatures are now in place, and it appears that the cease-fire is generally holding. There has been some repositioning, some reinforcement of troops, but no significant fighting has taken place recently, and we anticipate that as the security conditions permit the United Nations military liaison observers will now be able to be deployed in other parts of the Congo itself. There are about I think 25 observers thus far that have already been deployed in a number of the belligerent capitals, including Lusaka and, as you note, in Kinshasa as well. Now that we have passed the issue of the signatures, it should be possible to move more speedily under conditions of greater security. But you are quite right: the condition of security must exist to permit that kind of deployment. Mr. Meeks. So do you believe that the United Nations will be able to meet its 120 day deployment deadline? Ambassador Wolpe. I think there you are referring to what is stipulated in the Lusaka agreement, contemplation of the full deployment of the United Nations observer presence force within 120 days. It is very difficult to predict with certainty at this point, but what we are doing and what I know other interested parties are doing is to encourage the swiftest possible deployment because that will, I think, directly contribute to confidence building and to permitting the peace process to go forward on the ground. But it is very difficult to predict with any certainty any specific timeframe that has been laid out. Mr. Royce. Thank you. At this time we will go to Mr. Campbell of California. Mr. Campbell. Mr. Chairman. Ambassador Wolpe. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Campbell. I want to let the Ambassador finish. Ambassador Wolpe. Thank you, Mr. Campbell. Just to add one other note, just so there is no confusion, at this point in time the United Nations has deployed not observers but military liaison personnel officers to do the work of identifying what the needs really are and how the United Nations might most effectively meet those needs. Mr. Royce. Very good. Mr. Campbell. Mr. Campbell. I just begin by saying thanks to you for holding this hearing, and it is not your first. You have maintained a great interest in this field. I remember the hearing that focused on the potential use of hate radio in this context, and it is just very good to see a Chairman care so much as you do, not to mention a Ranking Member of such knowledge and distinction as my colleague. My three questions, I am going to state at the beginning and then would like you to take them as you will. First, do we have any interest from third countries in providing the military that is at least permitted in the Lusaka Accord for the demobilizing and the arrest of potential genocidaire? Second, what in heaven's name is Zimbabwe up to? I cannot figure this. Maybe you can be candid on the record, which is sometimes not possible. And third and last, it would concern me if there were any further occurrence of hate radio references to the ethnic Tutsi-Hutu distinction, for example, with the reflection in the war, and I wonder if you have any evidence that has recurred from what we were told existed at the beginning of the civil war. So those are the three questions, and I will be happy to take your answers in any order you wish, and by the way, thanks for the good work you are doing. I have the highest admiration for it. Ambassador Wolpe. Thank you very much, Mr. Campbell. We appreciate the travel you and Mr. Payne have undertaken. The conversations you have had in the region have helped, I think, to communicate Congressional concern and interest. It has been a very important part of this overall diplomatic effort. So I thank you both. First of all, we have been told that a number of countries have signed up for and indicated their willingness to make elements of their forces available for peacekeeping. I have not seen a breakdown as to whether the offers of any of these countries go beyond the observation mission of the United Nations. So the answer is we don't know yet. But we do understand there has been a quite good response among African states to the request that countries participate in peacekeeping generally within the Congo. Your question regarding Zimbabwe was rather open ended. Zimbabwe is a signatory to the Lusaka agreement. I was impressed, having been present in Lusaka, with the very great seriousness that Zimbabwe and all of the other state actors, as well as the Congolese players who were participating in the negotiations, how seriously they took the process. It was a difficult negotiation, and it was difficult precisely because the principal parties were very careful about the language that was inserted into the document. They wanted to have some confidence that they could live with the language in the document. Their seriousness was very much in evidence in Lusaka. Some of the key meetings, for example, took place without facilitators or observers. That in itself is normally a sign of seriousness of purpose. So that is why we say that this is an important document and an important beginning. Mr. Campbell. I will interrupt if I may just to tell you what I had in mind. I didn't understand with the economy Zimbabwe has, why they were putting troops into a war in Congo, nor did I understand the side that they chose, and it is really that which I was getting at. Ambassador Wolpe. Well, the Zimbabweans have stated very publicly and also in our diplomatic conversations that they felt very strongly that there had been a violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of a fellow SADC member, and President Mugabe felt an obligation in his role as chairman of the security organ of SADC to respond. That is what they have stated rather consistently. They have also stated now their desire to secure a negotiated settlement and a sustainable resolution of the conflict. So we look forward to working with Zimbabwe, with all of the parties to the Accord, in trying to find our way through to that kind of sustainable settlement. Mr. Campbell. Hate radio was the last question. Ambassador Wolpe. On that last question, I have not seen the reports to which you allude. We can certainly find out if there is anything. Mr. Campbell. Hearings by this Committee, by this Subcommittee early on in the conflict. Ambassador Wolpe. That was a long time ago, at the very outset. We have not seen any recent reports. Mr. Campbell. Nothing since. Ambassador Wolpe. We have not seen anything recent of that sort. Mr. Campbell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Royce. Let me just say that I think it was very instructive of Mr. Campbell bringing to our attention the original hate broadcast, but not just to the attention of the Congress and the Administration. He also brought this to the attention of the government in Congo and specifically to the Minister of Human Rights and had an ongoing dialogue. It is our hope that very constructive dialogue continues to guarantee that we do not hear further hate radio broadcasts directed against ethnic groups in Congo. We want to thank you very much, Ambassador, for your testimony here today. You have had a very difficult task that you have been given, and we appreciate your commitment. We look forward to working with you in the future on this very complex problem, but as you say, it is imperative that this Committee and Congress be part of the Administration's thinking that we work together, and so we invite you to continue the dialogue with members of this Committee as we move forward, and again, very much appreciate your testimony today. Ambassador Wolpe. Mr. Chairman, let me express my appreciation to you and to the Members of your Committee both for the timing of this hearing and for your continued interest in what is, in fact, one of the most difficult and critical issues facing the entire continent. Thank you very much. Mr. Royce. Thank you, Ambassador. We are now going to move to our last panel, and we are going to ask our panelists to understand that we have written copies of your report to the Congress. We have read those, and we will put them in their entirety into the record, and so we ask you to please abide by the 5 minute rule because that will then allow the Members here to engage in questions, follow-up questions, and the Members have, as I indicated to you, already read your testimony, and so it would be most helpful if you focus in your 5 minute summation on positive ideas in terms of going forward, what can be done now, what recommendations you are going to give us. On our second panel we are going to have Dr. William Zartman, Director of African Studies and Conflict Management at the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington D.C. Dr. Zartman has written extensively on negotiation and conflict in Africa. Dr. Zartman has testified before the Subcommittee before, and we welcome him back. And also we have Mr. Mwabilu Ngoye. He is a doctoral student at Rutgers University at present. He is the President of the Congolese International Union, a nonprofit organization that aims to represent and articulate a broad spectrum of political views, Congolese aspirations for national unity and of democracy, and I thank him for coming down from New Jersey and sharing his experiences with us today. And so we will begin with Dr. Zartman. STATEMENT OF DR. WILLIAM ZARTMAN, DIRECTOR OF AFRICAN STUDIES AND CONFLICT MANAGEMENT, SCHOOL OF ADVANCED INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY Dr. Zartman. Thank you, Mr. Royce. It is a pleasure to be here again, and I would like to express the admiration of Africanists, people interested in the area, for the bipartisan leadership that this Committee has shown in its attention to African affairs and also the knowledge that it shows about what is going on in Africa. I will try to be uncharacteristically brief and just pick up a couple of highlights of my written testimony, particularly after Howard Wolpe's very good summary of the situation. I think it is fair to characterize the Lusaka agreement as a cease-fire of fatigue and stagnation. The war just didn't go anywhere and people wanted to get out of it. But they are also left with their original goals of getting in, and the Lusaka agreement has a number of uncertainties and loose ends that don't condemn the agreement but leave us with an awful lot to deal with in the coming months and even years, I think that is the aspect that we should be looking at, and probably under an awful shadow that hangs over us. There was another Lusaka agreement in 1994 that supposedly brought peace for the third time to Angola next door and it has fallen apart, an awful omen. We certainly hope that what has gone on with that same name will not arrive at the same conclusion. A number of uncertainties that I would highlight. First of all, it is not clear what the rebellion was about and what it took to be satisfied or rather it is clear that there are a number of motives in the rebellion but the mix is not certain. Certainly, people were involved for personal and political and economic enrichment reasons. Other people were involved simply because they couldn't stand the inefficiencies of the regime that were going on in Kinshasa, and then the support from the outside came because neighboring states had valid concerns about the way the Congolese territory was being used against them. So there were real security concerns, and how these will be satisfied in the aftermath of the Lusaka agreement is not certain. It is not certain that the government of President Kabila and President Kabila himself has the ability to carry out the kind of opening up that is at least promised or the hope of which exists in the Lusaka agreement. Certainly, the behavior of the government toward its opposition, toward civil society groups over the past 28 months in which he has been in power, has not been a prima facie promise of a very good opening, and those bona fides have to be shown. It is not sure, too, what the mix is of neighboring aims. I mention the security concerns and there are also concerns, as one of the questions asked, about economic enrichment, and these two will have to be somehow satisfied or at least brought under control. The Lusaka agreement has a number of loose ends that are important to consider as it goes into implementation. It is committed to pursuing and disarming the rebellion, the armed groups as they are called that have found sanctuary in the Congolese territory, but armed forces of the neighboring countries have not been able to do this, and there is somewhat of a perhaps pious hope that the neighboring countries will be able to attract these rebellions into some kind of process of return. There is a big challenge there. There is on the other hand very little mention--perhaps an allusion, but no real mention--of a reconciliation process within the neighboring states, of pressure on the Ugandese, the Rwandese and so on, to make peace at least with the parts of their opposition that they can bring back into their fold. As Howard Wolpe said, the home states are urged to encourage voluntary repatriation, but it takes more than that to invite these people home particularly when they are threatened with often a justified death sentence. The round table or dialogue that is supposed to take place within Congo itself is something that is lagging now in its timetable. By mid-October talks are supposed to be started. Fifteen days after the signatures there was supposed to be agreement on a mediator. None of this has occurred, and if you can believe it, at the end of November, there is to be a new political system that is to be set up within Congo. Somebody asked about the 120 days. I don't believe that we will make this 90 day deadline after the agreement has been signed. The agreement also talks about a regional conference to solve some of the security problems, and these also need a venue and a sponsor. SADC is a biased mediator. It has been able to bring off an agreement, but it is a club of parties that are associated with one side of the conflict, and it is a little hard to leave mediation to parties to a conflict. Similarly, it will be difficult to leave the convening of a conference in the whole area, an effective solution or even effective consideration of the security problems, in the hand of SADC. In U.S. policy concerns, I think there are two things that are particularly important and worth emphasizing. When you go to Congo, you hear everybody tell you that it is time for the international community to take its responsibilities. On one hand that is an escapist kind of phrase. This conflict is the result of the lack of Congolese taking their responsibilities, government, oppositions and so on, and that is where responsibility lies. But on the other hand, that phrase is true. The international community, and in these halls that means the United States, has certain responsibilities. I think there are two things that can be emphasized. It is extremely important to get Congolese to talk to each other. The United States has a position of authority in the area, in the world, within that region itself, within the state itself. It can do much more to simply get dialogues going, in informal kinds of ways, and get the armed opposition, the government, the unarmed opposition and civil society discussing together. Otherwise, if nobody tries to pull them together, there are conflicts that have torn up internal politics in the past and those conflicts will not be overcome. Local groups are trying to do it. In Kivu that we have talked about, there are local attempts to come together over ethnic differences. Some assistance is needed. The government needs some encouragement to recognize those kinds of activities. The other thing is the peacekeeping force. I think it bears repeating again and again that we have got blood on our hands for what we didn't do in Rwanda in 1994 and what we didn't do in Congo-Brazzaville in 1997, and we have got to get over that. We have got to give Africans the same kind of treatment that we give an area such as Kosovo, and respond sincerely and enthusiastically, and that means that we have to face the possibilities of troops, logistic support, money into the peacekeeping operations that is a vacuum in the middle of Africa. Recently, there is movement that is starting up called the National Summit on Africa, which is an encouraging thing here in the United States. It seems to be building up a grassroots movement of support for concern for African policy and for engagement within Africa. Congressman Payne gave a good opening address to the regional meeting in Baltimore a couple of weeks ago of this group. One of the things that they have criticized of American policy is our neglect of Africa, and they have urged that the United States be willing to face the sending of troops and the giving of monetary support and logistic support to troop kind of operations in this area. There is support out there for this. We have a responsibility. [The prepared statement of Mr. Zartman appears in the appendix.] Mr. Royce. Thank you, Mr. Zartman, for your testimony. We will now go to Mr. Mwabilu Ngoyi for your testimony, sir. STATEMENT OF MWABILU NGOYI, PRESIDENT, CONGOLESE INTERNATIONAL UNION, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY, AND KANYAND MATAND, VICE PRESIDENT, CONGOLESE INTERNATIONAL UNION, PROFESSOR, LANGSTON UNIVERSITY, OKLAHOMA Mr. Ngoyi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee. It is a pleasure to testify this afternoon before you for the first time. We hope that this is not the last time to testify on behalf of the Congolese people, who are deeply worried about the prospects for peace in the Congo. Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit the statement on the diskette for the record. With your permission, I would like to summarize it and request for my summary on the disk to be part of the record. Mr. Royce. Both will be part of the record. We thank you. Mr. Ngoyi. My organization, the Congolese International Union, has a broad range of membership. Our members have many different opinions and views as to the political future of our country. We are opponents as well as supporters of the present government. However, there is one subject on which we all agree. We, all Congolese people, reject the illegal invasion of our country by Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi. We are unhappy and feel deeply disappointed by the failure of the U.S. Government to condemn the invasion, aggression and pillage of our country by the Rwandese, Ugandan, and Burindese armies. We fail to understand how the U.S. Administration can fall for the lies being told by these government, especially by Rwanda, about the need to invade the DR Congo, to overthrow the government and to carve up the Congo: all in the name of border security. It boggles the mind to think the American Administration is falling for this smoke screen. The Rwandan Ambassador, Mr. Chairman, is on the record to have lied before this Subcommittee. The Administration has said they never encouraged the invasion and never condemned them, but you know as well as I, Mr. Chairman, that in Africa and the rest of the world, when the United States fail to condemn, it is understood as encouragement. In this case, the United States failure to condemn Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda is tantamount to encouragement. The causes of the conflicts in the regions are related to the culture of violence and militarism, ethnic killing mentalities, ethnic self-serving interests that have set the stage for ethnic rivalries and ethnic mutual exclusion or extermination that is in itself the heart of genocide between Hutus and Tutsis. Unless these issues are clearly dealt with, ethnic mutual mass killing between these two rival groups will not end in the region; mass migration of refugees from these countries to Congo will not end, and the blaming of outsiders by these two ethnic groups will not end. We, all Congolese people, reject any form of partitioning of the DR Congo. We have difficulties endorsing the Lusaka Accord in its current form because: No. 1, it does not contain any obvious condemnation of the invaders, namely, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda. No. 2, it legitimizs and rewards terrorist behavior by allowing the invading troops to hold on to their current position. No. 3, it authorizes the resupply of weaponry to the invaders. No. 4, it keeps off the table of negotiation the nonarmed group. No. 5, it authorizes the disarmament of the Mai-Mai resistant group, which are non-Rwandan rebels fighting against their own ethnic extermination by Rwandese, Ugandese and Burundian troops. We recommend the following: (1) The U.S.A. has to take a more active role to stabilize the region. (2) The money from international institutions should either be allowed to both parties involved in the crisis or prevented in all fairness. (3) There ought to be a strong cry of outrage for the invasion of the DR Congo. (4) We strongly recommend to the international community to not allow verdict or judgment of the crisis on the sole basis of whether they support or not the current government in the DR Congo. For, we human beings pass, but no nations and institutions remain. President Kabila is just one person in millions. The nation should not be destroyed on the basis of personal feelings by invaders against the Congolese President. We believe that democracy is the best way of change of government without bloodshed of innocent people. (5) The U.S. Congress should hold accountable the invaders for their lies, manipulations, and deceptions throughout the crisis. (6) The United States should give the Congolese people a chance for democracy by ordering an immediate withdrawal of the invaders from the Congolese soil. (7) The U.S. Congress should request that the Arusha jurisdiction should be broadened to cover all crimes committed in Congo in order to combat impunity that perpetuates the cycle of violence in central Africa. The reason why we have recommended this is because of the several implications of the Lusaka Accords: (1) It guarantees instability in the region for many years to come because of mistrust it is creating. (2) It prepares for another genocide, as real causes of the crisis are not addressed. (3) It either kills or delays the democratization process and development in the region. (4) It sets the stage for partition of not only the DR Congo, but also many other African countries in the future. (5) It legitimizes an invasion as long as there is an emotional or sympathetic reason. (6) It legitimizes all human rights abuses and other kinds of abuses associated with the invasion. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. [The prepared statement of Mr. Ngoyi appears in the appendix.] Mr. Royce. We thank you, Mr. Ngoyi. Let me begin by asking a question of Professor Zartman. What weight do commercial interests, the control of resources and economic interests play in the participation of states that are active in this Congo conflict? I think there is a question of has this become a war for profit when we see what is being looted out of the Congo from Zimbabwe to Uganda, or actually most of the states in the region that seem to be involved all seem to have financial interest. Let me ask you to comment on that. Dr. Zartman. This is what happens when you have a power vacuum in an area of this kind. It is rich with raw materials. There are certainly private profiteers, including people involved in some of the military forces, and Zimbabwe, to your question about Zimbabwe, the main purpose of Zimbabwe seems to be to be able to benefit from its position in aspects of the economy, particularly in southern Congo and particularly in Gecamines and other of the mining areas. So I think that element is quite present. Mr. Royce. Let me ask you this, is Rwanda's rationale that it is securing its borders, is that legitimate given that its military forces are in fact several hundred miles into the Congo? Dr. Zartman. The concern is legitimate, and the concern, it seems to me, goes back to the welcome that then Zaire gave to the genocidaires, to the ex-FAR and Interahamwe, who used hundreds of thousands of legitimate refugees as shields, as groups within which to hide. These same groups then were used by the present government in trying to fight the Rwandans. Now, how the Rwandans do it and penetrating deep into the country is something that obviously on its own is not condoned in interstate relations, but there is a legitimate security concern to begin with. Mr. Royce. Well, then let us play devil's advocate for a moment. I will turn to Mr. Ngoyi and ask him the derivative of that question. How can the Hutu-Tutsi problem, as you have delineated that in your statement, how can that be solved in Rwanda and Burundi when Hutu rebels are using Congo as a base to destabilize these countries? Do these governments have a right to self-defense under certain circumstances? And let me let you have the floor on that. Mr. Ngoyi. Mr. Chairman, if necessary, I would like to ask that the Vice President be able to add some elements to the response I provide whenever needed. Mr. Royce. Certainly. Mr. Ngoyi. Thank you. I will try to give some elements. It seems that the Hutus or the remnant of the former Rwandan army are not only in the Congo, Mr. Chairman. They are also in other countries. So the rationale is that if the Rwandan government would invade Congo for that reason, therefore, we should expect Rwanda to be invading Tanzania, the Congo-Brazzville and other countries that surround Rwanda. I don't know if that is something that is being weighed. Mr. Royce. Let me ask another question of you, Mr. Ngoyi, where you said one of your concerns in terms of the Lusaka Accord was that it excludes the Mai-Mai groups. Why were these groups excluded? Was that a decision they made on their own part or did we just fail to include them in the Accords and is there any reason why they couldn't be part of the national reconciliation and the establishment of a new political dispensation envisioned by the Accords? Mr. Ngoyi. They have been included for disarmament of armed groups. Mr. Royce. Right, they have been told to disarm, and these are the groups that historically fought Mobutu and now aren't in Accord with the current government. The question is they have been asked to disarm but they haven't had a seat at the table, I guess, is the point that you were making. Yes. And we will ask the Vice President of the Congolese organization to identify himself and then he can speak. Yes, sir. Dr. Matand. OK. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. My name is Kanyand Matand. I am a professor at Langston University in Oklahoma. Mr. Royce. Yes, Professor. Dr. Matand. Concerning the question you just asked, which is very important to us. The Mai-Mai problem really is at the heart of what is going on because, as you just mentioned earlier on, it started with the fight against Mobutu. They did not start fighting against Rwanda, but if now they become a problem, the only reason is that when Rwandese army invaded Congo they systematically started killing clan leaders and the family members belonging to those groups. As the Congolese government was unable to protect and defend them, they had to take up arms against self-extermination, and that is where the problem is. And all Congolese people do feel that it is legitimate for them to defend themselves if the Congolese government is unable to do so. So that is why really Congolese people are against disarming them unless these invader groups leave the country. Mr. Royce. I am going to ask you at this time if you would just identify yourself for the record again and give your name and your position. Dr. Matand. OK. My name is Kanyand Matand. It is K-A-N-Y-A- N-D, M-A-T-A-N-D. I am a professor at Langston University in Oklahoma. Mr. Royce. And you are Vice President and delegate for Congolese International Union? Dr. Matand. Yes, in charge of the Americas. Mr. Royce. And, Doctor, we thank you for your participation today. My time has run out but at this time just for the record, I want to insert a statement by the Chairman of the Full Committee. He was unable to come to this hearing and regrets that his statement could not be made publicly, but we are going to insert Chairman Gilman's statement into the record at this time, and now we will go to the Ranking Member of the Committee Mr. Payne. [The prepared statement of Hon. Benjamin Gilman appears in the appendix.] Mr. Payne. Thank you very much. Dr. Zartman, could you give us an idea of what the political climate is in Democratic Republic of Congo with the level of a party of national unity or a vehicle to bring political parties together to talk about the future government? Dr. Zartman. I don't think that these efforts have really turned into anything as yet. I mean, this dialogue has not taken place, and in fact, one of the problems is the registration or re-registration of political organizations within Congo. The former political parties claim that they should not have to register because they continue to exist, as a new organizations. Some of the leaders or members have been interrogated, arrested and so on. It is not a very conducive atmosphere to setting up a dialogue. Hopefully, the implementation of the Accords will change that. Mr. Payne. That is good. Do you know if Tshisekedi is playing any role currently in the Congo? I know that at one point he went back to the farm, and do you know if there is any political activity with him in this process? Dr. Zartman. I think his activity has been much less. When I last saw him he was in Kinshasa in from the farm, and his followers were around. Followers of the UDPS, as it is called, have been arrested and their activity is diminished. It is a little hard to tell, the public opinion polls are limited to Kinshasa, but there are some good ones. He is still a leader of some recognition but doesn't have the same popularity that he had before. Mr. Payne. How about Karara and Mbiya. They were active, as you know, at the beginning of the new government. Dr. Zartman. Well, Karar is off with the RCD in Goma, Kinsangani, wherever its headquarters is now located, and the feeling is that both in the Kivu in the east and certainly Kinshasa he has lost enormous credibility, so he is not a leader of any account within the Congolese politics itself. There have been other people like Wamba dia Wamba, the one time president, still claiming to be president of the RCD, who is a figure of recognized integrity and suffering for it in the leadership that he can pull among the rebels. Mr. Payne. Thank you. Very much. Let me ask, Mr. Ngoyi, you may know that Congressman Campbell and I in the days before Mr. Kabila was able to mount an offensive that was successful in replacing Mr. Mobutu, that we visited Goma at that time and were encouraged by what he wanted to do. As a matter of fact, it was suggested that we not visit Mr. Kabila at that time because the official State Department did not feel it was the right thing to do, but being so opposed to the Mobutu regime for so long, we went anyway, and we had a very engaging and very good conversation with Mr. Kabila and met him on several occasions after that. I was just interested in the--your testimony is very clear that the problem in the Congo is specifically Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi's intervention in the Congo, and you did mention that they have nothing to do with the Congo. As you may recall, Mr. Kabila received a tremendous amount of support at the initial refusal of Mr. Mobutu to recognize and ostracize the Banyamulenge people who are against the basic ethnic Rwandans and his refusal to allow them citizenship with their movement then joining with Mr. Kabila, and then the other forces from Rwanda that assisted Mr. Kabila in Uganda and went on to the victory. The Rwandan, Burundians, I guess, and Ugandans, as you charge them, have had a problem with the continued cross border killings. As you may recall, there were tremendous attacks on the villages on the border several years ago, and it was felt that the government of Kabila was not supporting the--or patrolling the borders even though the Rwandans were controlling the border also, but they felt there was not enough support from that side and felt that they had to actually take the situation into their own hands as you know, as you recall. It is estimated between 500,000 and a million ethnic Hutus and moderate Tutsis were--I mean Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed, and I suppose there is some feeling that we need to be sure that this doesn't happen again. I guess my question is, there is an intertwining of the two, and the fact that there was such a close working relationship between the Kabila Government and the forces of Rwanda and Uganda during the move through--as a matter of fact, it is very ironic that Zimbabwe did absolutely nothing in the march of Kabila to Kinshasa, which surprised me greatly for the tremendous interests that they took after the fact and not before the fact. And so I just wonder if you could just elaborate a little bit on your feeling, and as we have indicated, Mr. Campbell and I were probably the biggest supporters Mr. Kabila had, and I speak for myself. I felt that it was great that there was going to be a change of 30 years of a tyrant of Mobutu. I have always opposed the U.S. policy of supporting Mobutu during the cold war, but that was the policy, and I wasn't Secretary of State. But I just wonder how you conclude that it is only Rwanda and Uganda's fault, if we are talking about blame, and that all of the other, Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia and others who came in after, although Angola was supportive of Kabila, also. As a matter of fact, they did many of the bridge construction, and the heavy duty work was done by the cooperation of Angolans to assist Mr. Mobutu, and even Ethiopia and Eritrea also gave assistance, everyone except Zimbabwe and Namibia. So if you could kind of clarify for me your strong feeling. I am not saying it is wrong or right. I would just like for you to try to explain to me a little bit better about how--and I don't point any fingers. I think there is enough blame to go around in this very complicated situation, but your fingers are only pointing at Rwanda and Uganda and Burundi, as you say. Mr. Ngoyi. Thank you, Congressman Payne. I would like to state that we don't condone nor support crimes committed either by the Congolese Government or the invaders. First, when Mr. Kabila came to power, our understanding is that the ones who were in control of the army and the security of boarders were the Rwandans and Ugandans. Second, I would also like to mention that the Congolese have been waiting for so long for democratic change in the country. Our conviction is that if there were not these unfortunate events, the Congolese would have speeded up with democratic change with the current government. We strongly believe that. If the forces in place were to leave, the Congolese people would push seriously for the change, for the initiation of the democratic process, the rule of law and the implementation of stable institutions and to have a government that is accountable to the people. Dr. Matand. If I may add this, Mr. Chairman, it is actually ironic, as Mr. Congressman Payne stated early on, that when Mr. Kabila took power his mentors were Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi. As you may recall, that Kabila was not the first choice among Congolese people, if it was not really the support from Rwanda, Burundi, which claimed to be one of the best leaders. So at the beginning the Congolese people were against Kabila. If we have a problem now, and we are talking in terms of Rwanda ethnic groups, it is built on what actually happens in the culture from the past. Because the international community seems to forget--just focus attention on the 1994 genocide and overlook exactly why these two groups are responsible for what is happening. In Congo, to remind you, we are 450 ethnic groups, although we have internal ones, but never had one group tried to exterminate another group. We cooperate, we have conflict but we still look the way we can sit around the table and find a compromise. That is why Mobutu's regime was weakened by different position groups. But in Rwanda we have mainly Rwanda, Burundi, we have mainly two ethnic groups which cannot stand each other. So what they do, if one takes power, the first thing to do is to chase the other group and look out to exterminate all the members. So usually they cross the border, they come to Congo because we know the importance of their survival. So in this case, unless this critical issue is dealt with, only time the international community will be just letting Rwanda cross the border to Congo to fight, actually is not even regular fighting but it is causing genocide of Hutus, which are not actually being spoken intensely as the genocide of 1994. So if there is a way of forcing these two groups around a table to get them together, unified, it will solve the problem because if they keep continuing with their policy or culture or modality of mutual exclusion, while we can blame Congo over and over, it will never solve the crisis in the region. Mr. Payne. I agree and I was just curious. As you mentioned, that is a problem that must be solved, and of course, you say everyone got together, was all right on Mobutu, but there is still the Banyamulenge people, who were still the Rwandans, were not treated all right in the Congo, and also of course the people from Chava province that moved to Angola for 30 years and came back, felt uncomfortable about coming back until Kabila came to, I guess, the Mai-Mai people. So, like I said, my whole concern is that you can give examples of almost any other country to point to a similar kind of problem, but I think that the whole solution--and I believe that is what this whole group of belligerents trying to come together to finally get the ex-FAR and the Interahamwe and the genocidaires, disarm them and have them return back to their countries, and that I think would at least take away, as you say, maybe an excuse that Rwanda uses in order to come through the borders of Congo. Dr. Matand. If I may add, Mr. Chairman, please. Mr. Royce. OK. Then we are going to go to Mr. Meeks and then Mr. Campbell. Go ahead. Dr. Matand. If you recall, not very long ago the Congolese Government agreed really to disarm the Interahamwe and the Hutus army group, send them back either to Rwanda or to different countries. So that issue is really on the table. It is not excluded. Mr. Royce. OK. Now, we are going to go to Mr. Meeks of New Jersey and then Mr. Campbell of California--of New York, Mr. Meeks of New York and Mr. Campbell of California, and that will conclude our hearing. Mr. Meeks. Mr. Meeks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Zartman, I have a couple of quick questions, something similar to what was asked earlier. What is your opinion, is the United States doing enough in its role in the Congo now? And if not, what else do you think we should be doing? Dr. Zartman. No, sir, I don't think that we are doing enough. I have pointed out one thing I think that we can be doing, and I pointed this out as early as the beginning of this year when I was out on a mission in Congo, and that is, to work for a dialogue among Congolese people, among Congolese organizations. I think that is an important role to play. Perhaps when you ask about doing enough, you may be talking about money or something like that. I think there are other things that don't take a lot of money that are crucially lacking and represent a role we can play. In terms of money we could be doing more, but there it has been very difficult and I think the Administration tried very hard in the beginning. I was one of the people with Congressman Payne who was very hopeful about the government that came in and replaced Mobutu, but the situation was not a welcoming situation. I think we made some mistakes as well, but there I think we have been as forthcoming as we can be. What we need at this point is to encourage this process now, the process now that has been launched in the Lusaka agreements so that it doesn't get off track. Mr. Meeks. Let me ask this, and I don't know whether I am reading you correctly or not, but it seems to me that you are somewhat pessimistic about the hopes of the implementation of the present cease-fire agreement. Is there anything that we can do as far as policy or any option that we can to try to make sure that the cease-fire agreement is implemented? Dr. Zartman. I am not pessimistic. I am an incorrigible optimist. Anybody who knows me knows that. But I think we better keep our eyes open and remember that this agreement is not self-implementing. We as Americans so frequently--and particularly in an area like Africa, that we would like to get out of, that somehow is troublesome to us in many perceptions-- we have the idea that once we get an agreement like this, well, then, everything is taken care of, we have got peace and got cease-fire and it can go and take care of itself. Whereas as I say, this needs tending. It needs encouragement. The parties need to be pushed to implement the action, and we need to be engaged, and I particularly mentioned this area of military either as troops or particularly financial and logistic support. There is in your organization I think a resistance to committing money to troops abroad, and I encourage you in your efforts to overcome that resistance. Mr. Meeks. Mr. Ngoyi, let me just ask this question. I think that we had a hearing not too long ago, and I get confused also as to whether or not you would describe some of the problems that are going on in the Congo, is it based upon tribalism or ethnicity, or just how would you describe it, either one of those two or something else. How would you describe some of that upheaval? Mr. Ngoyi. I will describe them as a problem based on, yes, ethnic problems, and I would also describe them as problems essentially military politics, that when you have a gun then you can dictate the politics. If we could ask the United States to strongly discourage the reliance of minority regime or any kind of regime in central Africa, to always try to access to power by gun, that will be a tremendous help. Dr. Matand. If I may add, Mr. Chairman, please. The way we describe it, we describe them as being ethnic intolerance but not to the level of wanting to eliminate an ethnic group. It does not rise to the level of mutual extermination as to what is taking place in Rwanda because you can see, we are 450 ethnic groups but we learn to disagree and live together. There has never been a single ethnic group claiming power in the name of ethnicity. This has happened very often in Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda, and that is why really we are completely different because they kill each other massively just to eliminate completely the opposite ethnic group. We don't do that in Congo. Mr. Meeks. And the last question real briefly, are you optimistic or pessimistic about the cease-fire and the peace agreement that is taking place? Mr. Ngoyi. I am rather very pessimistic. Unless the U.S. Government tried to provide some strong leadership, the likelihood of continued violence is going to be there. I am very pessimistic about the peace Accords. Mr. Royce. Thank you. Dr. Matand. If I may, please. Mr. Royce. Yes, doctor. Dr. Matand. I agree. I am also pessimistic for the simple reason that as long as those illegally invading troops hold to their position there is no reason really why we should expect any kind of change very soon. Mr. Royce. We go to Mr. Campbell. Mr. Campbell. Thank you. I wish to address Mr. Ngoyi or is it Mr. Mwabilu? Mr. Ngoyi. Ngoyi will be fine. Mr. Campbell. Ngoyi, first name then. Mr. Ngoyi. That is the last name. Mr. Campbell. I apologize. My list of the witnesses make it unclear to me. I wish to address you and Professor Matand to give to me and my colleagues a background of who the Congolese International Union is so that I can better weigh the advice you are giving. For example, are you elected by whom? Who can vote? A Congolese in France can vote, a Congolese in Belgium can vote, a Congolese in America can vote? Just tell me a bit about the organization of which you are president and of which you are Vice President. Mr. Ngoyi. Thank you very much. We think that we have submitted to the---- Mr. Campbell. I have it, yes. I have read it. Mr. Ngoyi. And in the name of national unity to further dialogue, inter-Congolese dialogue, we were talking to all parties, including the Congolese Government, the rebels, Mai- Mai, and people in the Congo. We are very grateful to Rutgers University's Center for Global Change which sponsored this conference. We had Congolese from Congo, Congolese from Europe, Congolese from Canada and Congolese from various states in the United States who came for 2 days conference in Newark and concluded by, of course, this organization, the Congolese International Union, borne out of a pact name, the pact of Newark, in recognition to the location and to show our gratitude to the university which has supported us. As I mentioned those groups, we have groups that are against the government. We have also among us groups that are supporting the government, and both had elections. I was elected as president, and we had also three vice presidents, one elected elected vice president for the Americas, one was elected vice president for Europe, a vice president and a national president for Congo, who is a priest. Mr. Campbell. And who is allowed to vote? Was it those who attended the conference in Newark or is it a broader group? Mr. Ngoyi. Those who were there voted. Mr. Campbell. Thank you very much. Anything that comes out of Newark has to have a presumption of legitimacy and credibility. I have always said that. Dr. Zartman, can you give me a thumbnail understanding, because I don't have it, of why Uganda and Rwanda fell apart in their backing of the rebel movement? It appeared that they were together, and then obviously with the dispute that we saw at Lusaka getting down to Wamba dia Wamba and these challenges to who was actually heading up the rebel movement. I don't understand where Uganda and Rwanda's interests separated. Dr. Zartman. I think they fell apart because they were on, not a joint track, but on parallel tracks; that is, each was concerned about the same issue but in their own terms, that is, their security zone on either side, this is the political aspect. And therefore, I think the Rwandans have a deeper feeling of their security concerns because of this split that goes down the middle of their society--or off to one side because it is a minority issue--whereas for the Ugandans there a number of different rebel groups, most of them supported by Sudan but also that have sanctuary in the Congolese territories, and therefore, it is not a conflict that reaches deep into the heart of Ugandan society but rather their peripheral groups. Therefore, it became easier for them to bring the security issue under control or imagine a control of the security issue. Furthermore, the group under Bemba that was associated with them was in some cases doing much better. So their security concerns were taken care of a little better, and they wanted to move out more rapidly than Rwanda did. It was tiring them, and then it was tarnishing their reputation. Mr. Campbell. Is there a difference between Uganda and Rwanda insofar as their willingness to come to terms with the Kabila Government is concerned? I say that because here's my prior and then please rebut the prior or confirm the prior. The prior is that Rwanda cannot come to an agreement with Kabila, that replacing him is the long term possibility that might intrigue them, whereas Uganda is perfectly capable of making an agreement with Kabila. Dr. Zartman. This is very hard to judge, but in the last trip we had when in Rwanda, I did not come out with that impression. I mean, we were told that Rwanda was not interested in overthrowing the government; it was interested in taking care of its security concerns; it was by no means interested in annexing territory. There was a trial balloon that was once floated by the President of Rwanda, and that was a big dud, nobody picked that up, and that seems to have disappeared, and I think the issue of redoing the boundaries or anything like that is quite legitimately, happily a dead issue. No, I think both can be players in this reconciliation and peace engagement that they have taken. Mr. Campbell. Thanks to all three witnesses. Thanks, Chairman Royce. Mr. Royce. Thank you, Mr. Campbell. Well, in conclusion let me just comment on something that Dr. Matand had said in his testimony. I think there is a certain irony in the fact that it was a vibrant and pro-democratic culture that seemed to be evolving, especially in the last 2 years of the Mobutu regime, in Congo, and we spoke by phone and we spoke in person when we were there several days after the Mobutu regime fell in Congo with some of these Congolese who desired this transition to democratic governance, and I think that as we move forward one of the important issues is keeping the focus on bringing the rule of law and bringing democracy to Congo, while at the same time having us focused on keeping all parties on board and committed to the Lusaka Accords and having all parties withdraw their troops from Congo. And I thank each of you, Dr. Zartman, again, and Mr. Ngoyi, for coming here and testifying here today. Very much appreciate it. Your testimony will be in the record. Thank you, members. The Committee stands adjourned. 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