GOMA NOTES - NAIROBI PROCESS: 12TH MEETING OF JMG TASK

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 KINSHASA 000258 SIPDIS SIPDIS SENSITIVE E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV PREL KPKO CG RW EUN SF AU UN SUBJECT: GOMA NOTES - NAIROBI PROCESS: 12TH MEETING OF JMG TASK FORCE, MARCH 7, 2008 REF: Kigali 165 ¶1. (SBU) Summary: The March 7 meeting of the Nairobi process Joint Monitoring Group (JMG) Task Force went smoothly and professionally. Discussion of the minutes of the previous meeting took only about 20 minutes. Congo noted it had launched its FDLR "sensibilization" campaign March 1. FDLR leaders have been in Kinshasa in preparation for the planned meeting in Kisangani; the EU, South Africa, and the AU all expressed intention to attend. There was agreement by all save Rwanda that JMG coordination with the Congo-Rwanda Joint Verification Teams (JVT) had been intended by the Nairobi signatories. MONUC, U.S., South Africa and EU all agreed to a DRC proposal to request instructions from the JMG envoys on the issue, but Rwanda was adamantly opposed. However, this wrangle was not as obsessive as past wrangles have tended to be. End summary. ¶2. (SBU) In contrast to previous meetings of the Nairobi process Joint Monitoring Group (JMG) Task Force, the March 7 session went smoothly and professionally. It began shortly after 1000 at MONUC-Goma and ended promptly at 1430, and the agenda schedule was scrupulously respected. ¶3. (SBU) Things were helped considerably by the presence on the Congolese side of Colonel Augustin Mamba. In addition to being focused and specific in his presentation, Mamba speaks excellent English and supplied his own translations, giving the Congolese delegation's interventions a professional polish they have sometimes lacked in the past. There were new attendees: in addition to Mpho Masetlha, who comes up every week from the embassy in Kigali, the South African delegation included Stephen Pearce, in town from the embassy in Kinshasa and a Mr. Balata who is on extended assignment in Goma. In addition to Jean-Michel Dumont, the EU delegation included Olivier Richard of France and Katy Higginson of the UK, both on TDY from Kinshasa. ¶4. (SBU) There were only two items of substance on the agenda: presentation of Congolese actions taken in support of the Nairobi Declaration, and JMG cooperation with the Congo-Rwanda Joint Verification Teams (JVT). Congolese actions to support the Nairobi Declaration -------------- -------------- ¶5. (SBU) Mamba made the following points: -- The DRC continues to cooperate with the Tripartite Plus intelligence fusion cell in Kisangani, sharing intel and jointly planning further intel ops. It presented the recent meeting of Tripartite Plus defense ministers in Kampala with the ex-FAR/Interahamwe order of battle and with their locations. (This was old news.) -- The FDLR "sensibilization" campaign was launched on March 1, coordinated by Foreign Minister Mbusa Nyamwisi, who is the head of the steering committee. Brochures have been prepared and are being distributed, and MONUC's Radio Okapi and local and peripheral radios are broadcasting messages. -- Ambassador Ngueba is in South Kivu, meeting with target groups, and has traveled to various locations. On Monday March 3, he met with a large gathering of traditional chiefs, administrators, and civil society members from throughout the province. Mbusa is engaged in extensive travel and contact with target groups in North Kivu. -- FDLR leaders have been in Kinshasa for some time (unspecified) in intensive talks with the GDRC in preparation for the upcoming meeting in Kisangani, which is to include defense officials of Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda. Mamba expected that this meeting would be held on March 13-15 (it has again been postponed). ¶6. (SBU) There was some discussion of which JMG members might attend the Kisangani meeting and of how transportation to Kisangani might be arranged on short notice. The EU, South Africa, and the AU all expressed their intention to attend. JMG-JVT Cooperation -------------- ¶7. (SBU) Kenyan Lt. Colonel Kombo, the AU's representative on the JVT, gave an overview of the team's work. The issue at hand was how coordination could be improved between the JMG and the JVT, given that their roles intersect. KINSHASA 00000258 002 OF 002 ¶8. (SBU) The key issue is reporting on allegations. At present, the JVT must report allegations and the findings of its follow-up investigations only through the two countries' respective ambassadors. It has no mandate for direct information-sharing or "instructions for coordination" with the JMG and can only coordinate if instructed. Such coordination would be highly desirable, Kombo said, but would be contrary to his orders as he understood them. ¶9. (SBU) There was agreement between all parties save Rwanda that such coordination had been intended by the Nairobi signatories, and that it should be a relatively simple matter to get them to assent to its happening. MONUC pointed out that the matter had already been referred to the JMG envoys, who had responded that such cooperation should indeed occur. But these instructions were not specific enough to be actionable by the JVT. ¶10. (SBU) DRC proposed that a request for more specific instructions be referred to the envoys for consideration at their next meeting. Everyone seemed to agree on this except the Rwandans, who said that the matter had perhaps been discussed at the recent Brussels meeting, for which the Task Force had yet to receive the minutes, and that pending these we should not refer to the envoys a matter which they may already have discussed but on which their decision has not yet been communicated to Task Force. The U.S. delegate pointed out that the Task Force would merely be requesting guidance, and that if the matter was not transmitted this week, it might miss the next envoys' meeting and have to wait another month. MONUC, South Africa and the EU and DRC eagerly agreed with this, but Rwanda was adamant. ¶11. (SBU) In a brief return to the kind of wrangling that has so characterized past JMG meetings, the Rwandans went on to argue that the JVT had been set up under a bilateral agreement that predated the Nairobi Declaration, and the Task Force could not, at its level, presume to find wording that might throw such an agreement into question. Others again objected that the Task Force would merely be requesting guidance. Kombo sat in stolid silence. ¶12. (SBU) In the end, the matter was tabled for further discussion the following week, when the Task Force would perhaps have received the minutes of the Brussels meeting and could draft a recommendation that would be consistent with its wording. This will almost certainly defer JMG-JVT information beyond the next envoys' meeting. Comment -------------- ¶13. (SBU) Clearly, A/F Senior Adviser (and U.S. envoy) Tim Shortley's discussions in Kigali (reftel) had had the desired effect. The discussion of the minutes of the previous meeting took only about 20 minutes, most of them devoted to fiddling with the overhead projector on which the MONUC Chair, Guenther von Billerbeck, put up a proposed paragraph he had drafted in response to comments he had received in advance (another first) from the Rwandan delegation. The wrangle over JMG-JVT coordination was not as obsessive as such wrangles have tended to be in the past and it began and ended within the time allotted to that item. End comment. GARVELINK