Challenges of Peace Implementation: the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Excellencies, Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is an honor to deliver the keynote address to this International Experts workshop on "MONUC and the Challenges of Peace Implementation in the DRC," organised by the prestigious Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria. I thank you most sincerely for your interest in the Congo and MONUC2, and thank you for the warm South African hospitality, which no matter how legendary always overwhelms us! On a personal note, I am also delighted to be back in South Africa, where my diplomatic career began exactly forty-years ago. In the ensuing four decades, almost all of my adult life and assignments have been in African countries in transition; this includes witnessing first-hand your own historic transition - a political miracle of the last century, which continues today. Nelson Mandela once said in my presence that at such times, he had a sense that he was, as he put it, in physical contact with history. It is therefore particularly appropriate that my subject today is the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) - Africa's third largest country - that is in the midst of an historic process of transition. I have been requested to focus my remarks on the role of the United Nations and the International Community in support of the Transition in the DRC. But before doing so, I wish to underline that the transition process in the DRC is quintessentially an African process. The milestones that have brought us to where we are today, are African milestones, such as the Lusaka Agreement, the Luanda Agreement, the Pretoria Accords, ad the Sun City Resolutions. At every step of the way, it was African statesmen, such as your own President Mbeki, and African institutions, such as SADC and the African Union, that brokered and facilitated agreements. Adn when it came to the UN's contribution, it was Kofi Annan who appointed Kamel Marjane and Amos Namanga Ngongi as his Special Representatives, and Moustapha Niasse as his Special Envoy for the Inter-Congolese dialogue - whose facilitator was another distinguished African, Sir Ketumile Masire.