By Alfred Wasike
and Agencies
FOURteen African presidents and United Nations chief Kofi Annan on Saturday signed a declaration to promote peace and security in the Great Lakes region.
Annan heralded the move as “an important step towards peace.”
The historic declaration calling for the region’s transformation into an area of “sustainable peace and security, of political and social stability, of shared growth and development” was signed at a conference in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Attending the conference were Presidents Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania, Mwai Kibaki of Kenya, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Domitien Ndayizeye of Burundi, Joseph Kabila of the DRC, Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Joachim Chissano of Mozambique, Omar Bashir of Sudan, Levi Mwanawasa of Zambia, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Bingu wa Mutharika of Malawi, Ange-Felix Patasse of the Central African Republic and Denis Ssassou-Nguesso of the Republic of Congo.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, the chairman of the African Union, also signed.
Annan called on the presidents to widen the declaration into a global peace accord for the region.
“Leaders who had spent much of the past decade divided by deep political and other disagreements, or even facing each other directly or by proxy in armed conflict, have come together behind a common vision of peace,” Annan said.
“Leaders have shown real commitment in signing this declaration, but the real test starts now, as they turn to designing the framework of the implementation phase, to be launched after the second summit in Nairobi,” Annan told a news conference.
The Great Lakes Region includes the DRC, which has known little peace since its independence in 1960; Rwanda, which suffered a genocide in 1994; Burundi, which is emerging from 11 years of civil conflict; and Uganda, which has been ravaged by the LRA conflict since the mid 1980s.
Museveni said Africa needed to resolve the agrarian nature of the economy, the stateless persons and the ideology of genocide/criminal sectarianism to transform the region faster.
“One cannot address the issue of the Great Lakes region without emphasising the need for industrialisation. It means processing all raw materials into finished products so that we get 10 times more earnings and create more jobs,” Museveni said.
Ends