VZCZCXRO0547
OO RUEHBZ RUEHDU RUEHGI RUEHJO RUEHMR RUEHRN
DE RUEHKI #0240/01 0701604
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
O 101604Z MAR 08
FM AMEMBASSY KINSHASA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 7650
INFO RUEHXR/RWANDA COLLECTIVE
RUCNSAD/SOUTHERN AF DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY COLLECTIVE
RHMFISS/HQ USEUCOM VAIHINGEN GE
RUZEJAA/JAC MOLESWORTH RAF MOLESWORTH UK
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC
RHEFDIA/DIA WASHDC

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 KINSHASA 000240 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PREL KPKO CG UN
SUBJECT: GOMA NOTES 03/09/08 - GOMA PRCESS: BACK ON TRACK 
 
REF: Kinshasa 238 
 
¶1. (SBU) Summary.  Abbe Malumalu worked late into the night of March 
8 with both the Mayi-mayi and CNDP to ensure agreement on his 
proposals for a revised structure of the Joint Commission to 
implement the Goma accords.  Agreement was formalized March 9 at a 
meeting attended by most of the signatories; groups which failed to 
appear at the meeting had been contacted and were on board.  The 
Abbe admonished the armed groups that the displaced people of the 
two provinces expected them to move forward effectively and 
collaboratively.  Privately, he told us that the past weekend had 
been make-or-break for the Goma process.  He will need to convince 
President Kabila to promulgate a new decree incorporating the 
proposals, but he seemed confident that this could be done.  End 
summary. 
 
¶2. (SBU) The National Coordinator for the Amani program, the Abbe 
Muholongu Malumalu, presented his proposals for a revised structure 
of the Joint Technical Commission on Peace and Security (JC) at a 
meeting March 9 at MONUC-Goma.  The proposals will incorporate into 
a new presidential decree the agreements reach by Abbe Malumalu with 
the CNDP in discussions held March 8 in Kirolirwe and on into the 
night in Goma. 
 
¶3. (SBU) The meeting was held under the joint chairmanship of MONUC 
(Jean-Michel Dumont of the EU, sitting in for John Almstrom, who was 
absent) and the GDRC (Vice Admiral Didier Etumba) and with others of 
the international Facilitation (U.S., UK, EU including France) 
present.  The participants were representatives of almost all of the 
signatories of the Goma Acte d'engagement, including the full CNDP 
negotiating team and almost all North and South Kivu Mayi-mayi 
groups, including PARECO North and South Kivu.  Three North Kivu 
Mayi-mayi splinter factions were missing, as was the FRF, which 
rarely ventures out of its High Plains redoubt in South Kivu. 
 
¶4. (SBU) The meeting itself was brief and to the point:  Abbe 
Malumalu handed out the new organizational chart, as finalized 
earlier in the morning and incorporating the changes described in 
Goma notes 03/08/08 (reftel).  In about ten minutes, he outlined the 
structures of the Commission and its various subsidiary bodies and 
placed it in the broader context of the national-level Amani program 
(with no objections from CNDP or anyone else). 
 
¶5. (SBU) Abbe Malumalu skillfully elided some of what could have 
been serious stumbling blocks (e.g.. the creation of a new post of 
executive secretary of the Commission, which is to be attributed to 
the CNDP, though this was left unstated).  He further stated that he 
had received nominations for all the positions to be filled at the 
decision-making levels of the Commission by the various signatories 
(with the CNDP by implication included, since theirs had been the 
only nominations still outstanding), and that lower-level posts 
would only be filled once job descriptions had been completed by the 
Commission itself through the adoption of its internal regulations. 
 
 
¶6. (SBU) It was time to move forward, the Abbe said.  He would 
obtain a new decree endorsing the proposed organizational chart and 
appointing the various groups' nominees (who, if necessary, may be 
replaced by their respective sponsors without recourse to a further 
decree - this was how things had been done, Abbe Malumalu said, at 
the electoral commission).  The Commission would thereby be 
established and would be required to move quickly to establish its 
internal regulations, to revise the assembly plan for the various 
groups' fighters, and to update the now badly out-of-date calendar 
of tasks that had been established by the Goma accords. 
 
¶7. (SBU) The Abbe went on to admonish the armed groups that the 
displaced people of the two provinces expected them to move forward 
effectively and collaboratively.  "The moment the Commission is 
established, we must be out there in the field, and in the [IDP] 
camps," he said.  The Commission's watchwords were to be 
"collaboration, efficiency, and sharing of positions."  "No group's 
capacity to create trouble in the field should allow it to assume it 
has any special importance within the Commission, nor will your 
ability to make trouble be allowed to impede the Commission's work," 
he concluded. 
 
¶8. (SBU) The draft minutes of the meeting, which merely endorse the 
new organizational chart and state that all nominations have been 
submitted, were handed out, as was the old Acte d'engagement 
calendar, which was also to be an appendix to the minutes, though it 
was made clear that updating this would be one of the first orders 
of business of the new Commission.  Abbe Malumalu asked for applause 
for today's success. 
 
 
KINSHASA 00000240  002 OF 002 
 
 
¶9. (SBU) Everyone applauded with the conspicuous exception of CNDP. 
Rene Abandi of its delegation (and the new Commission's likely 
executive secretary) raised his hand and said, as he and his 
colleagues have done so many times in the past few weeks, that his 
delegation had "a small problem," whereupon everyone in the room, 
primed for success, held their breath. 
 
¶10. (SBU) The CNDP's problem was the inclusion of the Acte 
d'engagement calendar, which had apparently not been cleared in 
advance, giving CNDP (which is always fearful that someone is, 
somehow, putting something over on it) the opportunity to raise one 
last objection.  The provisional nature of the calendar was 
explained, and the (already clear) expectation that the JC was to 
revise it as one of its first orders of business.  This explanation 
was eventually accepted, and the draft minutes disappeared back into 
the MONUC secretarial pool for correction of the many errors that 
had been made in typing up the official and confusing designations 
of the Mayimayi factions. 
 
¶11. (SBU) The group reconvened once this had been done, and one by 
one, starting with CNDP, each group initialed each page of the 
minutes.  Vice Admiral Etumba then made a brief statement, as did 
Dumont (speaking both for the MONUC cochairmanship and for the 
Facilitation), congratulating the group and urging future 
constructiveness.  Speeches from the floor were, mercifully, not 
requested, nor did Abbe Malumalu speak again.  He nodded and swept 
out of the room, and the meeting ended in slightly dazed confusion, 
as everyone else drifted away. 
 
¶12. (SBU) In a private meeting that evening, Abbe Malumalu told 
acting USG liaison officer that the past weekend had been 
make-or-break for the Goma process, as unspecified forces (but one 
can guess) in Kinshasa had tired of the whole business, which as far 
as they could see was going nowhere, and they were getting ready to 
shut it down.  He further said that he had worked late into the 
previous night with both the Mayi-mayi and CNDP to ensure that 
things would go smoothly the following day.  The North Kivu factions 
which had failed to appear at the meeting had been contacted and 
have agreed to sign a statement supporting the minutes.  He 
reconfirmed that, as he had stated at the meeting, the FRF, though 
absent, were on board. 
 
¶13. (SBU) Comment:  The Abbe planned to return to Kinshasa March 10 
with his minutes and organizational chart in hand.  He will need to 
convince the President to promulgate the new decree, but he seems 
confident that this can be done.  Now, perhaps, the real work of the 
Goma process can at last begin.  End comment. 
 
GARVELINK