09 09 13 Allafrica: U.S, UN Urge Congolese, Rwandan Restraint

Sounding upbeat about peace
prospects and warning all sides against further military action, their joint
visit came as Great Lakes regional leaders agreed this week that peace talks
between the Democratic Republic of Congo's government and M23 rebels should
resume in Kampala
within days.

DRC President Joseph
Kabila, whose army, with help from the United Nations, successfully pushed M23
fights roughly 18 miles
(30 kilometers)
from the eastern city of Goma
last week, is now in a stronger military position than it has been for some
time, but he has committed to restarting the talks.

Addressing a news
conference in Kigali, Feingold said he has been
pushing Kinshasa
to seek dialogue rather than take further military action.

"I specifically urged
President Kabila to use restraint," he said. "We do not encourage any
attempt by anybody, including the government of Congo, to solve this in a military
way. There will not be a military solution."

Robinson, the U.N.
secretary-general's special envoy to the region, emphasized commitments by
Kabila and fellow regional heads of state to conclude Kampala quickly with a peace deal.

"President Kabila
participated together with four other heads of state and all the other
delegations, and they decided together that there should be a short period of
continuation of the Kampala
dialogue, because it was felt that actually it could be concluded – after three
days [or] within two weeks," she said. "I was in the room when it was
taken together by the heads of state."

DRC information minister
Lambert Mende has said his government wants to resolve the conflict via talks,
but he has also stressed the need for M23 to disarm, because – as he put it –
the government cannot negotiate with rebels while they are killing people in
eastern Congo.

Robinson was then asked if
there is a disarmament deadline for M23 fighters.

"We hope that the Kampala talks, if they
conclude well, will immediately provide a process for disarmament," she
said. "There's no timeline for it, but it should start very quickly."

Asked if they are satisfied
by Rwanda's
assurances it is not providing cross-border support to DRC-based M23, the
envoys said they raised the issue of support for armed rebel groups – for M23
as well as Rwandan rebels FDLR and Ugandan rebels ADF-NALU – in each capital
they visited in the past four days.