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Summit on conflict, security in east Africa under way in Uganda
KAMPALA, OCT 24

Heads of state and top officials from several east African states met Friday in Uganda at a summit meeting of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), where discussions focused on conflict resolution and security.

Much of the event was given over to welcoming the achievements of IGAD-sponsored peace talks for Sudan.

"The government of Sudan and Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) have shown their willingness to take on great responsibilities and burdens and to make the necessary sacrifices to bring their country from the darkness of war, suffering, waste of resources and under-development to peace, stability and economic growth," Italian Deputy Foreign Minister Alfredo Mantica told the summit.

Italy chairs the IGAD Partners' Forum.

The parties to the Sudan talks, held in Kenya, said this week they would try to sign a comprehensive deal to end two decades of war by the end of 2003.

They have already agreed to a six-year period of automony for the separatist, rebel-held south and to the military arrangements to be put in place during that period.

"Sudan is steadily moving towards a comprehensive peace and we are confident that this comprehensive peace will be achieved," outgoing IGAD chairman and president of Sudan Omar el-Beshir, told the summit.

Mantica pointed out there was much work still to be done.

"The second challenge is to make justice and virtues of peace prevail in places where terror and hatred were spread by war," Mantica told the summit, before pledging the international community's support to reconstruct the shattered infrastructure of Sudan.

IGAD brings together the governments of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Sudan and Uganda. Somalia, which has no universally recognised government, is nominally also a member state.

Presidents Mwai Kibaki of Kenya, Sudan's Beshir, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi were attending the summit.

Somalia was represented by the president of the country's transitional national government, Abdulkassim Salat Hassan and Djibouti and Eritrea by their foreign ministers.

Also present was the chairman of the African Union, Mozambique's President Joaquim Chissano.

As well as mediating the Sudan talks, IGAD also hosts a conference aimed at reconciling Somalia's warring factions.

Somalia has lacked an effective central government since 1991.

"The leaders of Somali factions should abandon their differences so that they can be able to see opportunities before them," said Museveni, who assumed IGAD's chairmanship for the coming year.

"The African Union wants a strong and united Somalia," said Chissano.

Also raised at the summit was the issue of Uganda's civil war, which pits rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), based in the north of the country, against government forces.

"I am ready to order a ceasefire if the demonic terrorists do what I told them to do in my speech of August last year," Museveni told the summit.

He was referring to demands that the LRA stop attacking the army, abducting civlians and ambushing vehicles before a ceasefire and peace talks could be organised.

AFP

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