Museveni, Kabila to meet over border crisis

Vision reporters

PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni and his Congolese counterpart, Joseph Kabila, are meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, early next week to discuss border issues.

According to James Mugume, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the two leaders will conduct face-to-face talks during a summit of East African heads of state plus Congo.

“The exact date is not yet fixed but it will be between Sunday and Tuesday”, Mugume told Saturday Vision.

Relations between Uganda and the DRC have worsened again since the Congolese army occupied a disputed border area in West Nile last week and moved its border post 4kms towards Uganda.

At about the same time, Kinshasa cancelled an exploration contract with Tullow Oil, a company which operates on the Ugandan side of the border, threatening to undermine an agreement on joint oil exploration and exploitation in the Lake Albert basin.

“The shifting of the border is a violation of international laws,” says security minister Amama Mbabazi. “The action is provocative. The intention cannot be merely to seize that part of Uganda. There must be a bigger reason.”

He points at the pact signed in Ngurdoto, Tanzania, in September 2007 between President Yoweri Museveni and President Joseph Kabila, in which both parties agreed to set up a joint border demarcation commission and demilitarise the disputed areas.

The agreement was meant to resolve a dispute over Rukwanzi Island on Lake Albert, which arose after a British oil worker was killed there in August 2007. Kinshasa at the time claimed the oil boat had crossed into Congolese waters.

“We accepted the colonial borders and agreed to set up a joint border demarcation committee with the help of the former colonial rulers, Belgium and UK,” Mbabazi says.

“It is not necessary for Congo to unilaterally determine where the border is. We have never put a claim on any part of Congo. Why, then, are they doing this?”

A meeting on Monday, meant to diffuse the tension in the disputed Aru Territory, flopped when the Congolese team withdrew at the last minute, saying they were under instructions from Kinshasa not to hold talks.

The Congolese also denied the Ugandan team access to River Ofoo, which is perceived to be the natural boundary. Tensions rose further when the Congolese army heavily deployed around the disputed area.

The move has created fear among the local population and disrupted cross-border trade, which is a source of livelihood for many people in West Nile and North Kivu. Sam Kakonda Baker, the general manager of Zina Mwenyewe Enterprises, a company that exports beer to Congo, says they have been forced to use alternative routes.
“Vurra border post was one of our frequent crossing points. But with the new developments, we are now using Lia border post to access Congo. You can’t predict what may happen.”
Patrick Mwesige, the supervisor of the Uganda Revenue Authority in charge of the northern region, confirms that the events have affected cross-border trade.

“We want business to continue normally. But some people have reservations due to the presence of armed men. It is not healthy.”

There are also fewer Congolese crossing into Uganda to access medical care at Arua Regional Referral Hospital.
Foreign Affairs officials are downplaying the latest incident. “The anxiety is caused by the on-going remapping exercise and the presence of soldiers,” says James Mugume, the permanent secretary of Foreign Affairs ministry.

He also attributes the fear to the findings of the committee so far. “Rukwanzi Island has been found to be 2km inside Uganda. People who thought they were Congolese are Ugandans and vice versa.”

Mugume calls for calm until the joint committee finishes its work and produces its report. He says the foreign affairs ministers of both countries are in touch over the fresh crisis.

“There is nothing to worry about, we have established a joint border commission and we are using the maps provided by the British and the Belgians. They are using scientific methods to determine the border.”
The Aru aggression comes in the wake of Kinshasa’s decision to revoke a concession on its side of Lake Albert granted to Tullow Oil in 2006.

Instead, the Congolese Government last week gave the permit to a rival consortium that includes South Africa’s state oil company PetroSa.

Congo accuses Tullow Oil of violating its borders. In a statement, the Congolese government repeated earlier allegations that Tullow and Heritage Oil had breached the border on Lake Albert, with support from the Ugandan army, leading to eight Congolese fatalities.
Both oil companies and Uganda deny the allegations.

Congo also said the deputy minister, who awarded Tullow Oil the rights, had no authority in the first place and that the president never approved them.
Tullow called on the Congolese Government to recognise the agreement, adding that it paid a signature bonus of $500,000.

The company said that the contracts had been “signed and sealed” but had not yet received presidential approval, the final stamp needed under Congolese law.

“We hold these contracts and following the last election in 2006, the new oil minister felt there was an irregularity in the way contracts were awarded and sought to allocate them to other parties,” Tom Hickey, the company’s chief financial officer, told the BBC.

“We didn’t and don’t seek to have licences awarded to us in non-compliant ways.”
Kinshasa’s decision is likely to hamper the planned joint exploration and exploitation of oil fields, as was another part of the Ngurdoto agreement.

“Where an oil field is found to straddle their common border, the parties shall jointly explore and exploit that field and proportionately share the costs and proceeds in accordance with the principle of unitisation,” the agreement says.

In the same document, the Presidents agreed to upgrade their diplomatic missions to ambassadorial level and to attach petroleum experts in their respective embassies within three months of signing.

But eight months later, most of the Ngurdoto agreement remains dead letter, just like Congo’s pledge to neutralise the negative forces, LRA and ADF, beginning January 2008, which was the core part of the pact.

reporting by Frank Mugabi, Barbara Among and Charles Wendo