Luanda, 25 March 2014
Today in Luanda, President Kagame, President Museveni, President Sassou Nguesso, President Kabila and President Zuma gathered for a meeting on regional security hosted by President Dos Santos of Angola.
As members of the ICGLR committee charged with monitoring the situation in DRC alongside special guest President Zuma, the heads of states met to discuss additional ways to neutralize negative forces operating in Democratic Republic of Congo.
Opening the summit, President Dos Santos who is currently serving as the President of the International Conference of the Great Lakes Region, urged members to take further steps to bring peace to the region: “We refer to groups of ADF and FDLR and the need to undertake the multidisciplinary action in political, social and military areas to achieve full and lasting peace.”
President Dos Santos also called on countries to play an active part to prevent safe haven of negative forces on their territory:
“Countries should not allow their territories to be used for carrying out hostile actions against other states. We cannot allow rebel groups, without any social support base to continue to undermine the rule of law and the integrity of national borders, to destabilize the economic and social life and to keep the populations hostage of their illegal and criminal practices.”
Following an explanation of President Kagame and President Sassou Nguesso on FDLR, the summit committed to continue repatriation of FDLR members who are willing to disarm and return voluntarily and to engage urgent military actions against those unwilling to disarm.
The meeting concluded with all members agreeing to adopt a general approach for fighting against negative forces, including political and economic sanctions against all negative forces; to strengthen the regional and international cooperation in identification and neutralization of leaders of all negative forces sill active in the region and to work on the quick repatriation, in collaboration with the United nations, of the ex-M23 elements from Uganda and Rwanda. The summit also commended the promulgation of the amnesty law by the DRC Government and called upon DRC government to speed up the implementation of Nairobi Declaration in order to facilitate the resolution of the issue of ex-M23.
The committee of the ICGLR was established during the last meeting of the ICGLR held in January of this year. The aim of this committee is to monitor the situation in DRC.