President to meet ministers

Jul 31, 2003

THE defence ministers of France and Belgium, Michele Alliot-Marie and Andre Flahaut, are scheduled to meet President Yoweri Museveni today

By Felix Osike and Agencies

THE defence ministers of France and Belgium, Michele Alliot-Marie and Andre Flahaut, are scheduled to meet President Yoweri Museveni today.

The ministers were due to arrive in Entebbe late last night where the European Union’s French-led multinational force has its operational headquarters.

Alliot-Marie and Flahaut are to thank Museveni for Uganda’s support for the peacekeeping mission, before heading to Bunia in the troubled northeast of the DR Congo.

Mary Okurut, the Presidential Press Secretary, said the meeting would take place at the President’s country home in Rwakitura.

The two ministers’ talks with Uganda and DR Congo leaders are also expected to touch on the conflicts in Sudan and Burundi, sources in Alliot-Marie’s entourage told AFP. This evening, the French and Belgian ministers are due to return to the Entebbe military base, where they will have dinner with its 600-strong military staff before travelling to Kinshasa tomorrow, for talks with DRC President Joseph Kabila.

Kabila is heading a new transition government set up on June 30 under a peace pact signed last December. The accord ended a bitter civil war in which humanitarian agencies say around 2.5 million people had died since 1998, either in combat or from the disease and food shortages it caused.

French officials said they saw the emerging internal reconciliation in the DRC as a first step towards strengthening bilateral co-operation, helping to shore up the fragile peace.

The EU sent around 1,850 soldiers from nine countries to Bunia in June to quell a wave of ethnic bloodletting between the Lendu and the Hema communities.

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