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The presidents of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo signed a peace agreement on Tuesday aimed at ending a devastating war that has killed up to two million people in the heart of Africa.
South Africa and the United Nations acted as guarantors for a deal which optimists hope will mark the start of the end of the four-year-old war in Congo.
Rwanda's Paul Kagame pledged to withdraw thousands of troops from eastern Congo and Congo's Joseph Kabila undertook to help disarm Rwandan Hutu gunmen blamed for the slaughter of the Tutsi minority in Rwanda's 1994 genocide.
"It's a bright day for the African continent," South African President Thabo Mbeki said at a grandiose signing ceremony in Pretoria witnessed by his government ministers and diplomats.
"No more blood must run," Kabila said in his address. "There is a time for war and a time for peace."
But analysts are wary about the accord's prospects for success after the collapse of previous ceasefires and say the latest deal is fraught with difficulties.
"Any step forward is welcome. But the prospects of implementing this accord are completely unrealistic," said Alison Des Forges, an expert on Rwanda with Human Rights Watch.
The conflict in the Congo, dubbed Africa's World War, has sucked in the armies of Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola, which have backed the Kinshasa government. Rwanda and Uganda support splintered rebel groups in the vast country's remote east.
Of all the combatants in this complex regional conflict, analysts say tiny Rwanda - which claims it is there to snuff out Congo-based Hutu "Interahamwe" gunmen who committed Rwanda's genocide - is the real key to peace.
Kagame said the accord addressed the core issue of how to deal with "the genocidal forces that have been behind the conflict in our region."
Under the agreement reached by ministers last week, the Congolese government pledged to disarm and help arrest the thousands of Hutu militiamen who fled into eastern Congo after slaughtering Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the Rwanda genocide.
In return, Rwanda, which invaded in 1998 to try to topple the government and protect its western borders against the Hutu rebels, promised to pull its troops out.
But it remains to be proven that the Hutu fighters inside the Congo are all - or even mostly - veterans of the genocide.
Some experts on the region believe many have left Rwanda since 1994 and are new opponents of what they see as Kagame's minority Tutsi government.
There are few UN troops deployed in the region to disarm the Hutu militants and verify Rwanda's withdrawal.
Source: AllAfrica.com (New Vision, 31/7/2002)
Maps courtesy of The General Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.
