By MATTHEW LEE
Associated Press Writer
Friday, November 30, 2007
 Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice |
In meetings in Addis Ababa, Rice plans to explore prospects for peace in the Horn of Africa, where Somalia is ravaged by violence and humanitarian crises and fresh tensions between Ethiopia and arch-foe neighbor Eritrea threaten a 2000 peace pact that closed a bloody two-year border war, a senior official said.
She will also press leaders from Africa's volatile Great Lakes region on a comprehensive strategy to deal with insurgents from various conflicts, including those in Burundi, Congo, Rwanda and Uganda, who have sought haven in largely ungoverned stretches of the vast eastern portion of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the official said.
That agreement, which could be a model for a resolution to the fighting in Sudan's western Darfur region, has been under strain with the autonomous ex-rebel south accusing the north of reneging on elements of the deal, including sharing oil revenue, and briefly suspending participation in a unity government.
Rice will hold talks with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who has been a key U.S. ally in the war on terrorism and whose forces last Christmas eve invaded lawless Somalia to oust radical Islamists some of whom are accused of links to al-Qaida.
She'll also meet in Addis Ababa with the interim president of Somalia and the new prime minister of the Somali transitional government that has been unable to assert authority in much of the country, which has without a functioning central administration since 1991.
Frazer said the U.S. placed a priority on political reconciliation among fractious Somali clans that would allow elections to be held as planned in 2009.
Rice will push for full deployment of an African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia, allowing Ethiopian troops to leave and supplementing the presence of Ugandan soldiers. Frazer said Burundi is preparing to deploy peacekeepers in the very near future and that Ghana and Nigeria might be close behind.
On Eritrea and Ethiopia, there are fears that a 1998-2000 border war, that resulted in the deaths of some 70,000 people, may flare again. The frontier has never been demarcated and on Friday the commission charged with setting it disbanded after neither side could agree on the drilling border pillars.
Rice does not plan to meet with officials from Eritrea, which accuses the U.S. of favoring Ethiopia, while she is in Addis Ababa, Frazer said. Washington has accused Eritrea of playing a negative role in Somalia by arming and supporting Islamists in Somalia in part to harass Ethiopia.
With Great Lakes leaders, Rice wants to address the issue of the lingering insurgents in eastern Congo, including Hutu rebels responsible for Rwanda's 1994 genocide, combatants loyal to dissident Congolese General Laurent Nkunda and members of Uganda's notorious Lord's Resistance Army, Frazer said.
Frazer said the U.S. was continuing to urge Nkunda to go into exile.
Meanwhile she said Washington still supported peace talks between Uganda's government and the Lord's Resistance Army, despite evidence suggesting that the rebels' shadowy leader, Joseph Kony, may have ordered the execution of his pro-peace deputy, Vincent Otti despite rebel denials that he is dead.
"We can't confirm that Otti is dead," Frazer said, "but the evidence is pointing in that direction."
Source: AP, Nov 30, 2007