Four stories from today (updated to add the one from VOA):
Fighters in [DR] Congo's volatile Ituri district have started a process meant to integrate them into a national army, as the country's new government attempts to bring order to the troubled east.
Some 170 militia members, including 42 children, from the Front of Nationalists and Integrationalists (FNI) came out of the bush, bringing with them a cache of rifles, machine guns, mines and rocket-propelled grenades.
"It has started. Many things could happen of course, but we are reasonably optimistic," Kemal Saiki, spokesman for Democratic Republic of Congo's 17,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission, told Reuters on Wednesday.
The FNI, led by warlord Peter Karim, is considered one of the main obstacles to a peace in Ituri.
Under a 2003 deal to end a six-year war -- in which an estimated 4 million people died from violence and from war-related hunger and disease -- government forces, rebels, and militia have been grouped into the new national army, the FARDC.
The FNI was one of three Ituri groups which signed deals in mid-November, weeks before the swearing in of President Joseph Kabila, who won Congo's first democratic elections in more than four decades. But renewed clashes erupted in December.
Despite a tenuous ceasefire since January, Karim had failed to meet a series of deadlines and promises to disarm.
"All the main groups have now made a gesture," said the FARDC's Ituri commander of operations, General Vainqueur Malaya. "(The FNI) are there. They are already in the camps."
Malaya said [that] Karim would send another 200 fighters to be disarmed next week. All are eventually to be demobilised or incorporated into the army.
VIOLENCE CONTINUES
Widespread violence and human rights abuses have continued in Congo's eastern provinces, despite the official end to the 1998-2003 war and the presence of the world's largest peacekeeping mission.
In North Kivu, dissident General Laurent Nkunda, who led two brigades into rebellion in 2004, began bringing his forces back into the FARDC last month. The move was part of a deal brokered in Rwanda that will allow Nkunda's soldiers to remain in the province, where they claim to protect fellow ethnic Tutsis.
A similar deal may now be extended to armed groups in neighbouring South Kivu.
After his election, Kabila promised to bring order to Congo's east. Army officials have so far called the process, known as "mixage", a success. But others are less optimistic.
"What we're seeing in the east is due to the failure to deal militarily with these groups," said Jason Stearns, senior central Africa analyst with the International Crisis Group.
"They are buying these militias off. But this is a fragile solution. As soon as they aren't satisfied, they just pull out again," he said. "I think [that] this is far from over."
More violence broke out in North Kivu last week, soon after the deployment of brigades recently integrated by Nkunda's forces. The fighting pitted them against members of the FDLR, a Rwandan Hutu rebel group now based in eastern Congo.
Dozens of FDLR fighters and several Congolese soldiers have been killed in the recent fighting, according to U.N. officials.
From DPA...
Rebels of the notorious National Integrationist Front (FNI) have joined a disarmament programme in the Democratic Republic of Congo's unstable north-east, a United Nations official said [on] Wednesday.
A 2002 peace agreement put an end to a five-year civil war, which led to four million deaths, mainly through conflict-related disease and starvation. However, militia groups are still active along the eastern border of the country, which is as large as Western Europe.
Some 170 militia members came forward [on] Tuesday, Lieutenant-Colonel Didier Rancher of the UN's Mission in Congo (MONUC) told journalists. The FNI's leader, Peter Karim, had agreed to disarm since December, but failed to live up to previous deadlines.
Rancher attributed the success to military pressure put on the FNI by the Congolese army and MONUC: 'Because Peter Karim was cut from his supply chain, he had to discuss with us and join the [disarmament] process.'
Karim himself returned to the bush, where he is hiding, Rancher confirmed, but the rebel leader said [that] he will send more fighters to be disarmed next week.
The FNI has been blamed for the killing of a number of MONUC peacekeepers.
The central African country confirmed President Joseph Kabila in last year's first democratic elections in four decades. A new government is now charged with rebuilding the country and reforming the army.
From IRIN...
One of the main rebel groups in the troubled Ituri District of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) began surrendering its weapons on Tuesday, under an ongoing demobilisation, disarmament and reintegration (DDR) process, military and United Nations sources said.
The Front des nationalistes et intégrationnistes (FNI) militia, whose leader, Peter Karim, was made a colonel in the national army in October 2006, started handing in their arms in a village near Lake Albert on the DRC's border with Uganda.
"It is the last active group, whose main elements turned in their weapons this morning in the village of Dera and are being taken to a centre for initial orientation," said Gen. Vainqueur Mayala Vichana, the national army's commander in charge of Ituri. About 170 militiamen out of FNI's estimated 1,000 fighters had surrendered their arms by midday on Tuesday, he added.
Two other armed groups, which continued their military campaign during the transition period after the 2003 peace agreement designed to end civil war in the DRC and even after the 2006 elections, have already surrendered their arms under the DDR programme.
"This first gesture by Karim is a good thing, so that the United Nations Children's Fund [UNICEF] can recover child soldiers, so that they can be reintegrated back into schools or in professional jobs, crafts, trades. We hope that Karim will go all the way, because we estimate that 500 children are with him," said Bienvenu Panda, UNICEF's child protection officer in Ituri.
The FNI had been, until now, outside the DDR process, because Karim had imposed conditions on his group’s participation in it.
"The fact that 170 militiamen have joined the [disarmament] process is an encouraging sign," Mayala said.
He said [that] the government was satisfied it had met all the conditions set by Karim, except the demand for amnesty.
"Amnesty is a question of a political nature that I cannot respond to, but since a government has been formed after the elections, we have to wait for it to deal with the issue within the political framework, and we will, without doubt, have a positive response," Mayala explained. The government made Karim an army colonel and gave him money to organise the logistics of demobilising his combatants, he added.
According to Lt Col Didier Rancher, spokesman for the UN Mission in the Congo (MONUC), the talks that led to the start of the arms-surrender exercise were led by Mayala on the army side, while Karim headed the FNI delegation.
Humanitarian agencies are continuing to resume their activities in the zone under Karim's control.
"UN agencies are continuing to go into the zone under military escort," said Idrissa Conteh, information office of the UN Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Ituri.
Despite improving security on the ground, an estimated 15,000 displaced people are reluctant to return to their homes, according to OCHA.
"They fled due to fighting, in the past weeks, between the army and militias; harassment and looting of their property by the army; and the burning of their houses," Idrissa said.
MONUC had deployed several companies of soldiers in the area where the arms were being given up, and provided helicopters to take the disarmed fighters to the orientation centre, Ranchier said.
According to the agreement, the demobilised combatants will be free to choose whether to return to civilian life or join the DRC army.
"There is a place for everybody in the national army. It is a question of choice," said Mayala. He said [that] the disarmament exercise was not the only challenge. Reconciliation between rival ethnic groups was crucial, he said.
Ituri has been ravaged by ethnic conflict since 1999. More than six armed groups have fought intermittently, leaving more than 50,000 people dead and another 400,000 displaced.
A U.N. official has announced [that] members of a notorious militia group in northeast Democratic Republic of Congo have come forward to disarm. Franz Wild has the details for VOA from Kinshasa.
The U.N. Mission in Congo's military spokesman, Didier Rancher, announced [on] Wednesday [that] 170 fighters surrendered to the Congolese army and the U.N. mission, MONUC.
They are members of the National Integrationist Front militia, which has been reluctant to join a national program to disarm rebel groups and integrate into the national army.
Rancher said [that] the FNI had missed several deadlines in the past.
"It has been a long process, starting in mid-December, when we had the first agreement with the chief of this group, Peter Karim. He signed at the time, and promised to join the demobilization process," he said.
Rancher added that a recent military campaign against the FNI, left them isolated and with no option but to give up.
"We put on big military pressure from the 30th of January," he said. "We started a containment operation. Unfortunately roughly 50 militia[men] we killed in the fire-fights. After this, Peter Karim was only in one village northeast of Fataki. Because of this he was cut [off] from his supply chain."
Karim personally returned into hiding in the bush, Rancher said, but promised he would send more men to disarm next week.
Forty-two of those who had come forward Tuesday were children, the United Nations said. They were separated from the other fighters, and taken into care by children's rights groups.
Congo's east remains unstable. Its poorly trained army is unable to control rebels groups, even with the support of 14,000 Monuc peacekeepers.
A 1998-2002 war left four million people dead, most of whom died from starvation or disease.
Elections last year confirmed President Joseph Kabila in office. The international community accepts them as the first democratic polls in Congo in four decades. The government, which was approved by parliament [on] Saturday, now faces the challenge of rebuilding a country the size of Western Europe.
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