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Un chief African leaders discuss congo crisis

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Picture: (AFP/Roberto Schmidt)
Residents of the North Kivu town of Kiwanja use thin branches to set up a shelter in front of a UN peacekeepers base in Kiwanja. Heads of state and mediators gathered today in Nairobi to energise peace efforts in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

 

Regional leaders and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon are holding a crisis meeting aimed at ending the latest fighting in eastern Congo.

Seven African leaders are attending the African Union summit in Nairobi. Officials hope to get Congo and Rwanda to implement earlier commitments to end eastern Congo’s instability and disarm the numerous militia groups in the area.

The conflict in eastern Congo is fueled by festering ethnic hatred left over from the 1994 slaughter of a half-million Tutsis in Rwanda
and Congo’s civil wars.

Todays’ meeting follows a series of visits by high-level European Union and American officials to push for a diplomatic solution to the fighting that has displaced tens of thousands in the eastern Congo
region of North Kivu.

Sapa-AP

MRN