WASHINGTON (CNS): Congolese Church officials appealed to the United States to help implement a foundering peace accord among warring militias and Congolese troops.
Calling the conflict in eastern Congo the worst since World War II, Bishops Fulgence Muteba Mugalu of Kilwa and Fridolin Ambongo Besungu of Bokungu told
The bishops and executive secretary of the Congolese bishops’ justice and peace commission St Joseph Sister Marie-Bernard Alima were on a tour through Canada, the United States, France and Belgium.
After meeting with the US bishops’ justice and peace committee in Washington on December 9, they were to meet with representatives on Capitol Hill and officials at the United Nations.
Bishop Muteba pointed to a copy of the Goma accords, flipping through the pages of signatures from all of the participants, observers and facilitators of the Congolese conflict and cease-fire. He stopped on a signature of a US diplomat.
“The average Congolese thinks that Rwanda is behind the conflict and that the United States backs Rwanda,” he said, adding that the average Congolese thinks his or her “misfortune is the fault of the United States”.
“Right or wrong, but that is the perception of the average Congolese,” Bishop Muteba, who is president of the Congolese bishops’ social communications commission, said.
The United States should “provide logistical support for a rapid intervention force,” a UN-mandated force separate from the UN peacekeeping mission known by its French acronym as MONUC, Bishop Muteba said.
Since August, more than 250,000 people have been displaced in eastern Congo’s renewed violence.
More than 1 million people already were displaced in the region from previous fighting. The 1994 ethnic genocide of Tutsis by Hutus in Rwanda spilled over into Congo, and since then Rwandan rebels and Tutsi militants have been fighting the Congolese army, despite the Goma cease-fire.
