Uganda to compensate DR Congo


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In an interview recorded Saturday, September 27, for the flagship news programme, La Grande Interview, broadcast September 29th, on the France based pan African broadcaster, 3 A Telesud, Honourable Basango Makedjo Leon-Dehon, speaker of the Provincial assembly of the Orient Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), reveals that, Uganda has accepted to compensate victims of the so-called 3 day war, that took place in 1999.

The said war, which took place within the city of Kisangani, pitted the armies of Rwanda against those of Uganda. Besides speculations as to the reasons that sparked the ferociously fought battle, between the Armies of Rwanda and Uganda, it is not known with certainty, what made the former friends fall apart on foreign territory. Rwanda and Uganda backed the former AFDL rebellion of late Laurent Desire Kabila, which caused the fall of the long rule of late Mobutu Seseko in Zaire.

Since the fall of the regime of late Field Marshal Seseko, Zaire has been given its original name: Democratic Republic of Congo. Honourable Leon-Dehon also said, while Uganda has accepted to compensate victims of the 1999 Kisangani war, the people of the city in particular and Congolese in general, were still expecting to hear from Rwanda.

On the ongoing war in the east of his country, pitting the renegade ethnic Tutsi General, Laurent Nkunda, Mr Leon-Dehon said, Rwanda was contributing to fuel the conflict via her secretive support to the rebels. But he failed to specify the kind of support that, Rwanda is giving to General Nkunda and his men.

Asked why he thought, Rwanda would support General Nkunda, Honourable Leon-Dehon said, it was because his country’s neighbour had expansionist and envious tendencies. He vehemently refuted claims rampant within some quarters in the DRC, especially amongst opposition elements loyal to Jean Pierre Bemba, who is now jailed at the Hague, for crimes against humanity, that, Joseph Kabila kabange and Paul Kagame, were nourishing instability in the east of the DRC, in order to guarantee the second, an everlasting stranglehold on power in Kinshasa, in a bid to assure an ethnic Tutsi domination of the Great lake region.

Honourable Leon-Dehon also revealed that, his Orient province, will soon be divided into four provinces namely: Upper Bwelle, Lower Bwelle, Ituri and Tshopo provinces. Those new administrative divisions, he said, won’t be according tribal or ethnic setups, but in strict respect of the new Congolese constitution, which stipulates that, the DRC is a decentralised unitary state, made up of 26 provinces. Concerning fears in some quarters that the new Congolese constitution might spark secessionists’ movements, he said, the new laws and constitution are objective and balanced and also that, the country was sufficiently strong to ward off secessionists desires.

He also said his province has put up a blueprint to attract local, regional and extra African investors and also a mechanism to fight poverty.

Grand Interview is a 13 minutes programme of the news service of 3A Telesud. It is broadcast week days: Monday- Friday at 10 pm French time and can be watched in France via the following telephone, television and internet providers: Free, Nemericable, Noos and Club Internet. In Africa, 3A Telesud can be watched via Canal sat and in the United States via Hotbird 6.

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