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