Day: August 5, 2022

KINSHASA— The United Nations (UN) Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, and the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Felix Tshisekedi, have held talks on calls by Congolese that UN troops should exit eastern Congo.

According to Congolese officials, Tshisekedi and Guterres held a telephone conversation following recent clashes between UN troops and Congolese civilians, who have mounted protests demanding the exit of UN troops from DRC.

“The Head of State had a telephone conversation this afternoon (Wednesday) with Guterres, the secretary general of the UN. The two men discussed the situation of blue helmets in eastern DRC, particularly the recent altercations with the population,” DRC Government officials said in a statement.

“Taking advantage of this exchange, the secretary general of UN expressed his condolences to the President of the Republic, to the bereaved families and the entire Congolese population,” officials added in their statement.

Tshisekedi and Guterres telephone talks have come against the backdrop of recent altercations between UN blue helmets under the United Nation Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) and the population, which worsened last week with the killing of four UN soldiers and over 30 civilians in eastern Congo.

“It all started with the shooting that occurred on July 31 at the Kasindi border post, where the blue helmets, returning from leave, opened fire, causing the death of civilians and serious injuries,” Congolese officials said.

The altercations have also sparked off demonstrations in the city of Beni, with people demanding for the immediate exit of MONUSCO.

Guterres said he was “outraged by the serious incident that occurred” in Kasindi border point between Uganda and DRC.

On August 1, Tshisekedi chaired a security meeting, which the DRC spokesperson and Minister for Information, Patrick Muyaya, said re-assessed the MONUSCO withdrawal plan as agreed under the UN Security Council resolution 2556.

The UN resolution gave MONUSCO up to December this year to drawdown.

According to Patrick Muyaya, the official death toll arising from the anti-MONUSCO demonstrations following the Kasindi border point shooting has risen to 36, while 170 people have been rushed to hospital with injuries.

“In its report, the special commission led by the deputy Prime Minister gave a human toll of 36 dead distributed as follows: 13 in Goma, 13 in Butembo, including four blue helmets (UN troops), four in Uvira, three in Kanyabayonga and three in Kasindi,” Muyaya said.

Muyaya added that during the telephone conversation with the UN secretary general, the DRC President expressed “his total disapproval of the behavior of the blue helmets at the root of these incidents and the need to ensure that the culprits are severely punished.”

Tshisekedi also told Guterres that the withdrawal of the M23 rebels from all localities in eastern Congo should be enforced in accordance with the Nairobi communique’ by the East African Community Heads of State, the Luanda peace talks between DRC and Rwanda roadmap and the June 1, 2022 declaration of the UN Security Council.

On June 20 this year, EAC leaders approved the deployment of joint troops to pacify eastern Congo during the 3rd Conclave meeting on the DRC crisis in Nairobi.

Under the Nairobi Conclave, EAC leaders agreed to create a joint force to crackdown armed rebel groups operating in eastern Congo that refuse to surrender, unconditionally disarm and participate in dialogue processes.

In 2021, Uganda deployed troops in eastern Congo, on the invitation of DRC, to fight Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) in eastern Congo.

Eastern Congo is a haven to over 100-armed rebel groups, including the ADF, Red Tabara, Mayi-Mayi, M23, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), CODECO, FOREBU, among others.

Source: Nam News Network

Three more ships carrying thousands of tons of corn left Ukrainian ports Friday, part of a grain deal between Kyiv and Moscow, as the two countries accused each other of damaging a major Ukrainian nuclear power plant.

Ukraine’s state nuclear power company Energoatom said Russian shelling had hit the Zaporizhzhia power station, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.

“Three strikes were recorded on the site of the plant, near one of the power blocks where the nuclear reactor is located,” Energoatom said in a statement.

It said there were no signs that the damage had caused a radioactive leak.

Three strikes

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Ukrainian forces were responsible for damaging the plant.

“Ukrainian armed units carried out three artillery strikes on the territory of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and the city of Enerhodar,” the ministry said in a statement.

“Fortunately, the Ukrainian shells did not hit the oil and fuel facility and the oxygen plant nearby, thus avoiding a larger fire and a possible radiation accident,” it said.

Russian troops have occupied the plant in southern Ukraine since March.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Russia on Monday of using the plant as a shield for its forces.

An official with the Russian-backed administration in Enerhodar said earlier this week that Ukrainian forces had repeatedly attacked the plant, according to Reuters.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his daily video address on Friday that Russia was committing acts of “nuclear terrorism.”

“Russia must take responsibility for the very fact of creating a threat to a nuclear plant,” he said.

Corn shipments

Three more ships carrying thousands of metric tons of corn left Ukrainian ports Friday in a sign that a deal to allow exports of Ukrainian grain, held up since Russia’s invasion of its neighbor in February, is starting to work.

The ships departed for Ireland, the United Kingdom and Turkey. Another ship, the Razoni, left Ukraine on Monday for Lebanon, carrying the first grain shipment through the Black Sea since the start of the war.

In New York on Friday, U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said another ship was headed toward the Ukrainian port of Chornomorsk to pick up a grain shipment.

The U.N. and Turkey recently brokered a deal, the Black Sea Grain Initiative, aimed at enabling Ukraine to export about 22 million metric tons of grain currently stuck in silos and port storage facilities. The deal is meant to ease a global food crisis marked by soaring prices and food shortages in some regions.

Ukraine and Russia are key global suppliers of the wheat, corn, barley and sunflower oil that millions of people in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia rely on for survival.

In another hopeful sign, Taras Vysotsky, Ukraine’s first deputy minister of agriculture, said the country could start exporting wheat from this year’s harvest through its seaports as early as next month. According to Reuters, Vysotsky said Ukraine hoped in several months to increase shipments of grain through the route from 1 million metric tons expected this month to between 3 million and 3.5 million metric tons per month.

The initiative will run for a 120 day-period that ends in late November.

A backlog of nearly 30 ships that have been stranded in Ukraine’s southern ports because of the war has entered its sixth month. The Joint Coordination Center, or JCC, a body set up under the Black Sea Grain Initiative, says the ships need to move out so other ships can enter the ports and collect food for transport to world markets.

The crews and cargo of the vessels that set sail Friday will undergo checks at the JCC inspection area in Turkey’s territorial waters before moving on toward their destinations.

The JCC says that based on its experience with the first ship that sailed Monday, it is now testing moving multiple ships in the safe corridor, both outbound and inbound.

Erdogan in Russia

Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Russia on Friday for talks with President Vladimir Putin that included the grain deal, prospects for talks on ending hostilities in Ukraine, and the situation in Syria.

In a statement issued at the conclusion of the talks in Sochi, which lasted four hours, Putin and Erdogan emphasized “the necessity of a complete fulfillment” of the grain deal.

They also said that “sincere, frank and trusting ties between Russia and Turkey” are important to global stability.

In other developments Friday, the Biden administration prepared its next security assistance package for Ukraine. Reuters reported that the package was expected to be worth $1 billion, one of the largest U.S. military aid packages to Ukraine to date.

On Thursday, Zelenskyy blasted human rights group Amnesty International for a report that said Ukrainian forces had put civilians in harm’s way by establishing bases and operating weapons systems in populated residential areas.

The report “unfortunately tries to amnesty the terrorist state and shift the responsibility from the aggressor to the victim,” Zelenskyy said. “There cannot be, even hypothetically, any condition under which any Russian attack on Ukraine becomes justified. Aggression against our state is unprovoked, invasive and openly terroristic.”

The head of Amnesty International’s Ukrainian office, Oksana Pokalchuk, also took issue with the report. In posts on Facebook on Thursday, she said the Ukrainian office “was not involved in the preparation or writing” of the report and tried to prevent the material from being published.

Pokalchuk on Friday announced her resignation from Amnesty International in a Facebook post.

Amnesty International said its researchers investigated Russian strikes in Ukraine between April and July in the Kharkiv, Donbas and Mykolaiv regions. The organization said its “researchers found evidence of Ukrainian forces launching strikes from within populated residential areas as well as basing themselves in civilian buildings in 19 towns and villages in the regions.”

Source: Voice of America

Rwanda’s government has rejected a United Nations report that said Rwandan troops have been conducting military activities in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and are supporting M23 rebels there.

The Rwandan government issued a communique late Thursday aimed at discrediting the claim, which was first reported by Reuters earlier that day.

The statement, issued on the government’s official Twitter account, said: “Rwanda cannot comment on an unpublished and unvalidated report. The U.N. Security Council received a U.N. Group of Experts report on DRC in June 2022, which contained none of these false allegations, and a mid-term report is expected in December.”

The report from the U.N. Group of Experts, according to Reuters, said there was “solid evidence” that members of the Rwanda Defense Forces had carried out military operations in Congo’s Rutshuru territory.

It said RDF members conducted joint attacks with M23 fighters against Congo’s army and Congolese armed groups, and provided the rebels with weapons, ammunition and uniforms.

Rwanda has repeatedly denied accusations by the DRC that it has placed troops in eastern Congo and is supporting M23.

The Rwandan government said it is the DRC that supports rebels in the region and said there have been attacks and shelling from the DRC into Rwandan territory on multiple occasions, resulting in fatalities and destruction of property.

The statement Friday said Rwanda has the right to defend its territory and citizens, and not just wait for disaster to unfold.

Source: Voice of America