The UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, was upbeat yesterday about the chances of a peace settlement in the Democratic Republic of Congo after a crisis meeting of the 14-member Southern African Development Conference during the conference of the Non-Aligned Movement.
He told journalists that he was "very encouraged" after the meeting, held as a mini-summit within the 12th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement. He had earlier directed a special appeal to African heads of state. Addressing them as "my brother African leaders", he said: "We African leaders must summon the will to resolve problems by political, not military means."
But Mr Annan's optimism appeared to be either premature or an attempt by a polished diplomat to put a sheen on the difficult and often fractious process of bringing peace to the Congo - where President Laurent Kabila, who installed himself as president last year after overthrowing the corrupt regime of Mobutu Sese Seko, faces a widespread rebellion.
Mr Kabila did not even wait for the mini-summit seeking a formula to bring to his country. Earlier, on Wednesday, he apparently signalled his contempt by leaving the conference hall in the midst of Mr Annan's address.
The United Nations earned Mr Kabila's wrath by its criticism of human rights abuses by his troops during the 1997 rebellion against Mobutu Sese Seko.
In his own speech to the plenary session, the Congo president - who is accused by his foes of being as corrupt and tyrannical as the man he ousted - launched a scathing attack on the leaders of Uganda and Rwanda; he accused them of supporting the rebellion and their troops of committing "odious crimes" on Congolese soil, including murder, rape and pillage.
President Sam Nujoma of Namibia - one of three presidents with Mr Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Mr Jose Eduardo dos Santos of Angola to have sent troops to assist Mr Kabila's embattled government - adopted a similarly tough stance. Implicitly rejecting calls for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from the Congo as a prelude to peace negotiations, he said: "We will only leave when the job is done to the satisfaction of the government of the Congo."
Judging from Mr Kabila's speech, that point would only be reached with the crushing of the rebellion. As the Non-Aligned Movement's conference drew to a close yesterday conclusive victory for Mr Kabila and his allies remained a far from certain - and certainly distant - prospect, given the dominance of rebels in the eastern half of the vast country.
Reuters reports:
The summit in Durban ended with a pledge to fight poverty and to find peace in DR Congo.
"We commit ourselves to work tirelessly for the eradication of poverty and underdevelopment," President Mandela said in a closing statement. "The goal of peace in our countries and the world remains at the centre of our perspective for the further development of human civilisation," he said.
Leaders of the 113-nation movement said in their final communique it was their own responsibility to find a place in the new world economic order. But they said wealthy nations had a responsibility to share their wealth and to facilitate a review of the relationship between the commodity-based economies of the developing world and the manufacturing economies of the developed world.
Publication in the Johannesburg Star yesterday of a leaked letter from Deputy President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa to Mr Mugabe showed that relations between South Africa and Zimbabwe were still chilly, despite attempts by Mr Mbeki to downplay the quarrel between the two countries, sparked by differences in approach to the Congolese conflict.