(Ugandan Prez Yoweri Museveni, accused by Congolese to be a Bismarckian buffoon)
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The Congolese delegates to the Kampala talks with the Rwandan proxies of M23 seem to just have woken up from their naïveté about Ugandan Prez Yoweri Museveni and to the reality that Uganda and Rwanda are allies who both are actively planning the disappearance of the DRC.
And it appears these Congolese delegates have just realized what I've been saying all along on this blog, that Museveni was orchestrating a double-cross with his pal, Rwanda's Prez Paul Kagame, and their M23 henchmen to have the Congo properly screwed and balkanized.
In an interview with Radio-Okapi on October 3, François Mwamba--the DRC Coordinator of the follow-up of the Addis Ababa Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework agreement for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (February 2013)--waxed wroth not only at Crispus Kyonga, Uganda's Defense Minister and talks mediator, but at Museveni himself as well.
In early September, an extraordinary summit of heads of states of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) was convened by Museveni in Kampala just as armed clashes had flared up again between the FARDC and the Rwandan proxies of M23 near Goma.
In its final communique, the ICGLR heads of states ordered that the "Kampala dialog resume within three days after this extraordinary summit and conclude within a maximum period of 14 days during which maximum restraint must be exercised on the ground to allow for talks to resume."
According to Mwamba, all this hullabaloo was all but a one-man-show Museveni had m.c.'ed for a twin purpose: 1) For his own image as a peacemaker at the UN General Assembly in New York; and 2) To so to speak stampede the Congolese into signing a peace agreement with M23 without reading all the damning points in the fine print.
One of those horrendous points in the fine print was that M23 should govern for a renewable 5-year period the vast swaths of the DRC territory under its control!
Said Mwamba:
"The famous fourteen days sprang a disappointment on us when we were called in Kampala, where a theater and a cosmetic show was set up. The only thing that interested [the Ugandans] was not that people had to lay down their weapons, it was not to add any pressure [on M23]. It was instead geared toward the kind of report that had to be presented in New York on September 23" at the United Nations General Assembly."
Mwamba added--"exasperated," according to Radio Okapi:
"They shoved us into a room, snapped pictures of us, crazy stuff like that, then finally we were given a so-called meeting agenda consisting of ten points" to sign.
Mwamba further said:
"Even if we've got to negotiate ten more years, no one would ever make us sign stuff of this nature."
He was teary-eyed when he added:
"No one can get us distracted at the brink of that fall--be that person called Museveni or somebody else!"
Others are more pungent in their attack against Museveni, accusing the Ugandan president of attempting to be a reincarnation of a Roman republic dictator.
"You, sir, ain't nothing but a Bismarckian buffoon," a Kinshasa politico called me out on Museveni.. He was obviously referring to the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck who presided over the scramble for Africa in the Berlin Conference of 1884-1884...
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PHOTO CREDITS: Via monitor.co.ug