http://congodrcnews.com/2012/12/15/breaking-now-kabila-attacks-rwanda/

 

Breaking: Now Kabila Attacks Rwanda

déc15

Joseph Kabila

DRC President Joseph Kabila is likely to come under fire following a Saturday televised national address in which he accused Rwanda of "leading a war on Congo."

The statement, which comes at a time when his government is holding peace talks with M23 rebels in Kampala, confirms fears that Kabila could be playing double standards and exploiting the negotiations for a military buildup in Goma.

"We must be ready to defend our country all the way to the ultimate sacrifice," said Kabila, adding, Rwanda had taken it upon itself to command M23 operations against his elected government.

Kabila further called for "stepped up recruitment of soldiers" to build a "professional army which would be the country's fortification."

"As we work towards uniting our country, efforts aimed at reinforcing our army's capacity will be accelerated," said the President.

"Defence must be our top priority. That's the only solution for the current upheavals," said Kabila.

It remains unclear why Kabila chose to make the strong-worded statement in the midst of talks initiated by the Great Lakes leaders aimed at putting an end to the humanitarian and security crisis and foster development in Eastern Congo.

M23 President Jean-Marie Runiga recently said his intelligence wing had received information that DRC had deployed thousands of troops and tanks in Goma to avoid the strategic town's recapture by rebels.

M23 recently pulled out of Goma, Sake and other towns following calls from the Ugandan leader who doubles as the ICGLR chairman, Yoweri Museveni, and the international community.

The rebels said they had respected Museveni's decision on condition that Kabila held direct talks with them to iron out their "legitimate grievances."

Speaking at a recent joint press conference with Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame and Museveni in Kampala, Kabila expressed willingness and commitment to hold direct talks with M23 with the view to find "a long lasting, homegrown and peaceful political solution" to the crisis.

The two parties later sent delegations to Kampala where negotiations have been ongoing at Commonwealth resort, Munyonyo.

A final announcement of their resolutions was expected in the next few days.

Rwanda and Uganda have denied accusations of supporting M23 rebels with military equipment and recruits.

KAGAME SPEAKS OUT

Speaking at the 10^th National Dialogue in Kigali on Thursday, President Paul Kagame said he was not ready to shoulder DRC's problems, adding whoever wanted him to sort out the vast ountry's mess had to pay him.

While the Great Lakes regional leaders, including Tanzania's Jakaya Kikwete, have in the past condemned MONUSCO's failure to maintain peace in Congo, Kabila today asked the international to "review" the $1.2bn-a-year UN peacekeeping mission mandate lest its results will remain "mitigated."

Diplomats have since questioned Kabila's commitment to the talks, with many telling Chimpreports that he is usually compelled to issue such statements to avoid being overthrown by his own army

Kabila further told Parliament today that he would soon roll out an initiative aimed at building "national cohesion."

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-shmuley-boteach/rices-failure-in-rwanda-p_b_2217779.html Rabbi Shmuley Boteach Rabbi and Writer GET UPDATES FROM Rabbi Shmuley Boteach Like 1k Rice's Failure in Rwanda Precludes Her From Becoming Secretary of State Posted: 11/30/2012 9:37 am     Rwanda , Rwanda Genocide , Susan Rice , Susan Rice Secretary Of State , World News That Susan Rice either willfully misled the American people on the Benghazi attacks, or lazily absorbed intelligence briefings without the least bit of personal involvement, is obvious. That she was covering for the Obama Administration in denying a terror attack just weeks before the election is speculative but likely. That she does not, therefore, deserve to become Secretary of State is arguable. But what is not arguable is that she deserves to be denied the post for a different reason altogether: Rwanda. What emerges when taken together -- Rice's weak response in Benghazi, blaming the murder of four Americans on a stupid video, and her shameful lack of action in the Rwandan genocide -- is a career diplomat of singular weakness, lacking the spine or muscularity to assert American moral influence in the world. Rice was part of Bill Clinton's National Security Team that in 1994 refused any involvement whatsoever in the Rwanda genocide, leaving more than 800,000 men, women, and children to be hacked to death by machete in the fastest genocide ever recorded. The Clinton Administration had just been spooked by the Black Hawk down incident in Somalia and wanted no further foreign entanglements. But the lengths to which they went to deny assistance to the Tutsis, with Rice being central to the decision-making process, will forever live in infamy. But not content to insist on American non-involvement, the Clinton administration went a step further by obstructing the efforts of other nations to stop the slaughter. On April 21, 1994, the Canadian UN commandeer in Rwanda, General Romeo Dallaire, declared that he required only 5000 troops to bring the genocide to a rapid halt. In addition, a single bombing run against the RTLM Hutu Power radio transmitting antenna would have made it impossible for the Hutus to coordinate their genocide. But on the very same day, as Phillip Gourevitch explains in his definitive account of the Rwandan genocide, We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We will Be Killed with Our Families, the Security Council, with the Clinton Administration's blessing, ordered the UN force under Dallaire reduced by ninety percent to a skeleton staff of 270 troops who would powerlessly witness the slaughter to come. This, in turn, was influenced by Presidential Decision Directive 25, which "amounted to a checklist of reasons to avoid American involvement in UN peacekeeping missions," even though Dallaire did not seek American troops and the mission was not peacekeeping but genocide prevention. Indeed, Madeleine Albright, the American Ambassador to the UN, opposed leaving even this tiny UN force. She also pressured other countries "to duck, as the death toll leapt from thousands to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands... the absolute low point in her career as a stateswoman." In a 2001 article published in The Atlantic, Samantha Power, author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning A Problem of Hell and arguably the world's foremost voice against genocide and who currently serves on the National Security Council as an aide to President Obama, referred to Ambassador Susan Rice and her colleagues in the Clinton Administration as Bystanders to Genocide. She quotes Rice in the 2002 book as saying, "If we use the word 'genocide' and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November congressional election?" Rice's subordination of a human tragedy of epic proportions to partisan politic interests mirrors the current allegations of why she denied a terror attack in Benghazi. Rice then joined Madeline Albright, Anthony Lake and Warren Christopher as part of a coordinated effort not only to impede UN action to stop the Rwanda genocide, but to minimize public opposition to American inaction by removing words like "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" from government communications on the subject. In the end, eight African nations, fed up with American inaction, agreed to send in an intervention force to stop the slaughter provided that the U.S. would lend them fifty armored personal carriers. The Clinton Administration decided it would lease rather than lend the armor for a price of $15 million. The carriers sat on a runway in Germany while the UN pleaded for a $5 million reduction as the genocidal inferno raged. The story only gets worse from there, with the Clinton State Department refusing to label the Rwanda horrors a genocide because of the 1948 Genocide Convention that would have obligated the United States to intervene, an effort that Susan Rice participated in. I recently met Gourevitch at a press conference I hosted for the Rwandan Minister of Foreign Affairs, Louise Mushikiwabo, where she announced that Rwanda would be opening an Embassy in Israel in the next six months. It was an honor for me to encounter an American who had done so much to highlight the brutal slaughter of innocent Africans while the most powerful country on earth did nothing. But why honor Susan Rice for the ignominy of doing nothing while six in Rwanda died every minute. Why elevate a woman so oblivious to American moral principles and the value of African life that she thought we out to sit this one out? It was painful enough to watch Kofi Anan elevated to Secretary General even though as head of UN peace-keeping forces worldwide he sent two now infamous cables to Dallaire forbidding him from any efforts to stop the genocide (the cables are on display in the Kigali Genocide Memorial where I visited in the summer). But to elevate Rice would make a mockery of those who believe that "Never Again" ought to mean just what is says. Better that Rice remain where she is. An ambassador whose spinelessness perfectly matches the organization she's in. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, whom Newsweek and The Washington Post calls "the most famous Rabbi in America," is the international best-selling author of 29 books, and will shortly publish "The Fed-up Man of Faith: Challenging G-d in the Face of Tragedy and Suffering." His website is www.shmuley.com. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.

More than 900,000 displaced in east DR Congo

http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/news/2012/12/more-than-900000-displaced-in-east-dr-congo   More than 900,000 displaced in east DR Congo Posted by AFP on December 14, 2012 Congolese women fleeing war ravaged regions/FILE KINSHASA, Dec 14 – More than 900,000 people have been displaced by violence in the strife-ridden eastern DR Congo region of North Kivu, up about 500,000 on the figure made public in April, a UN official said Thursday. The steep rise was due to intense fighting between the army and rebel group M23 around the regional capital Goma, said Gert Weskereen of UN refugee agency UNHCR. Goma was taken by rebels without much resistance on November 23, but they left the mining hub eight days later under pressure from neighbouring countries and set up positions nearby. Speaking at a press conference with the World Food Programme (WFP) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Weskereen said 914,000 displaced people had been registered in North Kivu so far, but would not rule out that some of them had been counted several times. Since the end of the fighting about two weeks ago, people have been returning to the Rutshuru region north of Goma, which had been taken by the rebels in July. So far, 9,000 households, or about 27,000 people, have returned. The WFP said refugees had settled down in 19 areas around Goma. Only one camp is being managed by Congolese authorities. Others are improvised sites set up around facilities such as schools and churches. Nona Zicherman of UNICEF put the proportion of displaced people who have been accommodated by host families at 80 percent. Of these, 160,000 received food aid, said the WFP's Fabienne Pompey. According to a UNICEF tally, 751 children were reported missing by their families, separated from them in the fighting and chaos created by the rebel advance through the chronically volatile but mineral-rich east. Only 84 have so far been able to return to their families. The M23′s lightning capture of Goma eight months after the rebels launched an uprising against the government had raised fears of a wider war and a major humanitarian crisis in DR Congo. Kinshasa and the M23, which was formed by army mutineers, opened talks on Sunday in the Ugandan capital, where the rebels are expected to present a raft of demands to the government, including a call for major political reform for the war-weary region. The M23 was founded by former fighters in a Tutsi rebel group whose members were integrated into the regular army under a 2009 peace deal that they claim was never fully implemented. Several of its leaders have been hit by UN sanctions over alleged atrocities.

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-gets-solution-susan-rice-problem-174728224--politics.html   Obama Gets a Solution to His Susan Rice Problem By Michael Hirsh | National Journal – Fri, Dec 14, 2012   It was a classic Washington exit: stealthy and swift, with few fingerprints. President Obama didn't want to be seen as backing down. So Susan Rice — one of his most devoted aides since 2007 — gave him the way out, seemingly all on her own. "If nominated, I am now convinced that the confirmation process would be lengthy, disruptive, and costly — to you and to our most pressing national and international priorities," Rice wrote on Thursday in a letter withdrawing her name from consideration as secretary of State. In a statement in response, Obama said that "while I deeply regret the unfair and misleading attacks on Susan Rice in recent weeks," he "accepted her decision." He added that Rice will continue as his U.N. ambassador for the time being. (RELATED: Picking a Fight Over Susan Rice Would Not Serve the Country) This was all the part intended for public consumption. The underlying reality is this: The president is almost certainly furious about this turn of events — which represents the first major defeat he's suffered since his reelection — but he's a savvy enough politician to know how to back off without seeming to back down. While floating Rice's name for secretary of State in the media was always something of a trial balloon — she was never formally nominated or even publicly declared by the administration to be the leading candidate to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton — Obama appeared to really want to appoint her, calling her "extraordinary" and excoriating GOP attacks on her with unusual (for him) personal pique. But as the weeks passed, it became clearer that Rice's biggest political problem was no longer just the klatch of Republican senators, led by John McCain, who were fiercely criticizing her for allegedly misleading statements on the attack at the U.S. consulate that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11. After a series of strikingly unsuccessful meetings on Capitol Hill in which she failed to impress even moderate Republicans such as Susan Collins of Maine, Rice also found herself facing resistance from foreign-policy elites who questioned her temperament and her record. In addition, human-rights critics were up in arms over her behavior toward African dictators, particularly her role in allegedly holding up publication of a U.N. report that concluded the government of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, with whom she has a long and close relationship, was supplying and financing a brutal Congolese rebel force known as the M23 Movement.  That may have been the tipping point, though an official on Rice's team declined to say so. As she put it herself in her letter to Obama, the president had some other "pressing national international priorities.… It is far more important that we devote precious legislative hours and energy to enacting your core goals, including comprehensive immigration reform, balanced deficit reduction, job creation, and maintaining a robust national defense and effective U.S. global leadership." In other words, the Obama team was quickly coming to realize that, even though it appeared he had considerable leverage over the Republicans following a more-robust-than-thought reelection victory, a Rice nomination was simply going to cost him too much political capital, especially when it came to a long-term budget deal. Two administration officials did not respond to e-mailed questions asking whether Rice's letter had been solicited by the White House. So exit Susan Rice, and enter a far more confirmable candidate, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who has long coveted the job at State, having acted largely as an advocate for the administration's policies over the past four years as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. Last week, two officials on the Obama team told National Journal that the president was "genuinely conflicted"  about which one to choose. Now Obama no longer has to be. Still, giving State to Kerry also means opening up a Senate seat in Massachusetts. That would prompt a special election that could allow recently defeated Republican Sen. Scott Brown to recapture a seat in 2013, a risk Democrats may prefer not to take given that they have a slew of other vulnerable seats on the line in 2014. Evade one risk in Washington, and another always appears.

http://news.yahoo.com/text-susan-rices-letter-obama-091935927.html   Text of Susan Rice's letter to Obama By By The Associated Press | Associated Press – Fri, Dec 14, 2012 Susan Rice, the embattled U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, abruptly withdrew from consideration to be the next secretary of state on Thursday after a standoff with Republicans.   Here is the text of the letter she submitted to President Barack Obama:   "It has been and remains my highest professional privilege to serve as your United Nations ambassador. I am deeply grateful for your steadfast support for all we do at the U.S. Mission to the U.N. and for my dedicated colleagues. Your vision and leadership have enabled the U.S. to restore our global standing, strengthen our national security, repair our relationship with the United Nations and advance U.S. interests and values. I am proud of the many U.S. successes at the United Nations, including the protection of civilians from Libya to Cote D'Ivoire, strengthening the nuclear nonproliferation regime and increasing international pressure on Iran and North Korea through the toughest sanctions ever, our unwavering support for Israel, our contribution to the birth of the world's newest state, South Sudan, accelerating U.N. reform and our bold defense of the equal rights of all human beings regardless of their race, religion, economic status or whom they love. I look forward to building on this major progress in your second term. I am highly honored to be considered by you for appointment as secretary of state. I am fully confident that I could serve our country ably and effectively in that role. However, if nominated, I am now convinced that the confirmation process would be lengthy disruptive and costly— to you and to our most pressing national and international priorities. That trade-off is simply not worth it to our country. It is far more important that we devote precious legislative hours and energy to enacting your core goals, including comprehensive immigration reform, balanced deficit reduction, job creation and maintaining a robust national defense and effective U.S. global leadership. Therefore, I respectfully request that you no longer consider my candidacy at this time. The position of secretary of state should never be politicized. As someone who grew up in an era of comparative bipartisanship and as a sitting U.S. national security official who has served in two U.S. administrations, I am saddened that we have reached this point, even before you have decided whom to nominate. We cannot afford such an irresponsible distraction from the most pressing issues facing the American people. I am grateful, as always, for your unwavering confidence in me and, especially, for your extraordinary personal support during these past several weeks. I look forward to continuing to serve you and our great country with enthusiasm and pride as U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations and as a member of your Cabinet and National Security Council".