Congo: Cracks appeared in a new government designed to end five years of war in the Democratic Republic of Congo yesterday when ministers representing rebel groups boycotted a swearing-in ceremony.
A spokesman for one of the rebel groups said the ministers objected to taking an oath of allegiance to President Joseph Kabila, who is due to stay on as head of a transitional government launched on Thursday.
"This ceremony is unconstitutional. We have been asked to swear our allegiance to the president, and not to the country," said Lola Kisanga, spokesman for the main RCD-Goma rebel group.
Disputes over the form of oath the new ministers should take reflect potentially deeper divisions between members of the new administration, given the task of guiding the Congo to its first elections since independence from Belgium in 1960.
Fighting still rages in the northeast of the country between militias and rebels despite the signing of a peace deal by various warring parties in April.
The violence casts a shadow over efforts to build momentum for the new government in Kinshasa.
The two rebel groups refusing to attend yesterday's ceremony represent key pillars in the new transitional government, the result of years of wrangling at a series of peace conferences.
Other participants in the transitional administration, which includes members of the government, civil society and political parties, went ahead with the ceremony without the RCD-Goma and MLC rebels. The MLC is the country's second largest rebel group. The new government was formally inaugurated on Thursday with the swearing in of four new vice-presidents, including the leaders of the MLC and RCD-Goma.
An RCD-Goma official said the four vice-presidents had sworn allegiance to Congo's institutions on Thursday, rather than to Kabila himself. The war in the former Zaire began in 1998 when Rwanda and Uganda invaded to back rebel groups, involving six foreign armies at its peak and leading to the deaths of an estimated three million people, mainly through hunger and disease. - (Reuters)