{{African nations have agreed to suspend military operations for six months against FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda) in Congo to give them more time to lay down their arms, regional government officials said.}}
The FDLR rebels, who seek to overthrow the Rwandan government and who include former soldiers and Hutu militia held responsible for Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, announced in April they would disarm. Some began doing so in May.
Disarmament would improve the prospects of stability in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where millions have been killed in nearly two decades of conflict that has sucked in an array of armed factions and national armies.
Congo is a major producer of diamonds and metals, including copper and gold.
The suspension was announced after a meeting in Angola on Wednesday of foreign ministers from a regional bloc including states in central and eastern Africa.
“The results of this surrender (of FDLR arms) are not sufficient … but still the member states deemed that as acceptable,” Angola’s Foreign Minister Georges Chikoti told national news agency Angop. He said the FDLR’s progress towards disarming would be reviewed after three months.
The FDLR and previous incarnations of the group have operated in Congo’s eastern borderlands since they fled Rwanda following the genocide that claimed over a million Tutsi lives. They are regularly accused of human rights abuses, including massacres of civilians.
The rebels offered to disarm and take up political dialogue on May 30 but so far only around 200 fighters have surrendered out of an estimated 1,500.
The FDLR continues to prepare militarily despite claiming readiness to lay down its arms, U.N. experts said in an interim report on Thursday.
reuters
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