VZCZCXRO6022
OO RUEHBZ RUEHDU RUEHGI RUEHJO RUEHMR RUEHRN
DE RUEHKI #0258/01 0751801
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
O 151801Z MAR 08
FM AMEMBASSY KINSHASA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 7680
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 000258 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PREL KPKO CG RW EUN SF AU UN
SUBJECT: GOMA NOTES - NAIROBI PROCESS: 12TH MEETING OF JMG TASK 
FORCE, MARCH 7, 2008 
 
REF:  Kigali 165 
 
¶1. (SBU) Summary:  The March 7 meeting of the Nairobi process Joint 
Monitoring Group (JMG) Task Force went smoothly and professionally. 
Discussion of the minutes of the previous meeting took only about 20 
minutes.  Congo noted it had launched its FDLR "sensibilization" 
campaign March 1.  FDLR leaders have been in Kinshasa in preparation 
for the planned meeting in Kisangani; the EU, South Africa, and the 
AU all expressed intention to attend.  There was agreement by all 
save Rwanda that JMG coordination with the Congo-Rwanda Joint 
Verification Teams (JVT) had been intended by the Nairobi 
signatories.  MONUC, U.S., South Africa and EU all agreed to a DRC 
proposal to request instructions from the JMG envoys on the issue, 
but Rwanda was adamantly opposed.  However, this wrangle was not as 
obsessive as past wrangles have tended to be.  End summary. 
 
¶2. (SBU) In contrast to previous meetings of the Nairobi process 
Joint Monitoring Group (JMG) Task Force, the March 7 session went 
smoothly and professionally.  It began shortly after 1000 at 
MONUC-Goma and ended promptly at 1430, and the agenda schedule was 
scrupulously respected. 
 
¶3. (SBU) Things were helped considerably by the presence on the 
Congolese side of Colonel Augustin Mamba.  In addition to being 
focused and specific in his presentation, Mamba speaks excellent 
English and supplied his own translations, giving the Congolese 
delegation's interventions a professional polish they have sometimes 
lacked in the past.  There were new attendees:  in addition to Mpho 
Masetlha, who comes up every week from the embassy in Kigali, the 
South African delegation included Stephen Pearce, in town from the 
embassy in Kinshasa and a Mr. Balata who is on extended assignment 
in Goma.  In addition to Jean-Michel Dumont, the EU delegation 
included Olivier Richard of France and Katy Higginson of the UK, 
both on TDY from Kinshasa. 
 
¶4. (SBU) There were only two items of substance on the agenda: 
presentation of Congolese actions taken in support of the Nairobi 
Declaration, and JMG cooperation with the Congo-Rwanda Joint 
Verification Teams (JVT). 
 
Congolese actions to support the Nairobi Declaration 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
 
¶5. (SBU) Mamba made the following points: 
 
-- The DRC continues to cooperate with the Tripartite Plus 
intelligence fusion cell in Kisangani, sharing intel and jointly 
planning further intel ops.  It presented the recent meeting of 
Tripartite Plus defense ministers in Kampala with the 
ex-FAR/Interahamwe order of battle and with their locations. (This 
was old news.) 
 
-- The FDLR "sensibilization" campaign was launched on March 1, 
coordinated by Foreign Minister Mbusa Nyamwisi, who is the head of 
the steering committee.  Brochures have been prepared and are being 
distributed, and MONUC's Radio Okapi and local and peripheral radios 
are broadcasting messages. 
 
-- Ambassador Ngueba is in South Kivu, meeting with target groups, 
and has traveled to various locations.  On Monday March 3, he met 
with a large gathering of traditional chiefs, administrators, and 
civil society members from throughout the province.  Mbusa is 
engaged in extensive travel and contact with target groups in North 
Kivu. 
 
-- FDLR leaders have been in Kinshasa for some time (unspecified) in 
intensive talks with the GDRC in preparation for the upcoming 
meeting in Kisangani, which is to include defense officials of 
Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda.  Mamba expected that this meeting would 
be held on March 13-15 (it has again been postponed). 
 
¶6. (SBU) There was some discussion of which JMG members might attend 
the Kisangani meeting and of how transportation to Kisangani might 
be arranged on short notice.  The EU, South Africa, and the AU all 
expressed their intention to attend. 
 
JMG-JVT Cooperation 
------------------- 
 
¶7. (SBU) Kenyan Lt. Colonel Kombo, the AU's representative on the 
JVT, gave an overview of the team's work.  The issue at hand was how 
coordination could be improved between the JMG and the JVT, given 
that their roles intersect. 
 
 
KINSHASA 00000258  002 OF 002 
 
 
¶8. (SBU) The key issue is reporting on allegations.  At present, the 
JVT must report allegations and the findings of its follow-up 
investigations only through the two countries' respective 
ambassadors.  It has no mandate for direct information-sharing or 
"instructions for coordination" with the JMG and can only coordinate 
if instructed.  Such coordination would be highly desirable, Kombo 
said, but would be contrary to his orders as he understood them. 
 
¶9. (SBU) There was agreement between all parties save Rwanda that 
such coordination had been intended by the Nairobi signatories, and 
that it should be a relatively simple matter to get them to assent 
to its happening.  MONUC pointed out that the matter had already 
been referred to the JMG envoys, who had responded that such 
cooperation should indeed occur.  But these instructions were not 
specific enough to be actionable by the JVT. 
 
¶10. (SBU) DRC proposed that a request for more specific instructions 
be referred to the envoys for consideration at their next meeting. 
Everyone seemed to agree on this except the Rwandans, who said that 
the matter had perhaps been discussed at the recent Brussels 
meeting, for which the Task Force had yet to receive the minutes, 
and that pending these we should not refer to the envoys a matter 
which they may already have discussed but on which their decision 
has not yet been communicated to Task Force.  The U.S. delegate 
pointed out that the Task Force would merely be requesting guidance, 
and that if the matter was not transmitted this week, it might miss 
the next envoys' meeting and have to wait another month.  MONUC, 
South Africa and the EU and DRC eagerly agreed with this, but Rwanda 
was adamant. 
 
¶11. (SBU) In a brief return to the kind of wrangling that has so 
characterized past JMG meetings, the Rwandans went on to argue that 
the JVT had been set up under a bilateral agreement that predated 
the Nairobi Declaration, and the Task Force could not, at its level, 
presume to find wording that might throw such an agreement into 
question.  Others again objected that the Task Force would merely be 
requesting guidance.  Kombo sat in stolid silence. 
 
¶12. (SBU) In the end, the matter was tabled for further discussion 
the following week, when the Task Force would perhaps have received 
the minutes of the Brussels meeting and could draft a recommendation 
that would be consistent with its wording.  This will almost 
certainly defer JMG-JVT information beyond the next envoys' 
meeting. 
 
Comment 
------- 
 
¶13. (SBU) Clearly, A/F Senior Adviser (and U.S. envoy) Tim 
Shortley's discussions in Kigali (reftel) had had the desired 
effect.  The discussion of the minutes of the previous meeting took 
only about 20 minutes, most of them devoted to fiddling with the 
overhead projector on which the MONUC Chair, Guenther von 
Billerbeck, put up a proposed paragraph he had drafted in response 
to comments he had received in advance (another first) from the 
Rwandan delegation.  The wrangle over JMG-JVT coordination was not 
as obsessive as such wrangles have tended to be in the past and it 
began and ended within the time allotted to that item.  End 
comment. 
 
GARVELINK