Addis Ababa: The African Union is ready to send troops to the restive eastern Democratic Republic of Congo as part of a peacekeeping force, AU Commission Chairman Jean Ping said on Sunday.
“The AU is prepared to contribute to the establishment of a regional force to put an end to the activities of armed groups,” Ping told African leaders at the opening of the pan-African bloc’s summit meeting in Ethiopia.
DR Congo President Joseph Kabila was at the meeting as well as Paul Kagame of Rwanda, currently at odds over Kinshasa’s allegations Kigali is supporting a rebellion known as M23, in the mineral-rich eastern Kivu region.
Kabila’s government has accused high-ranking Rwandan officers of supporting a rebellion by soldiers who mutinied from DR Congo’s regular army.
The allegations echo the findings of a UN panel of experts who last month said Rwanda was supplying arms and fighters to the rebels.
Rwanda has denied involvement and in turn accuses Kinshasa of renewing cooperation with Rwandan Hutu rebels, who have been based in eastern DR Congo since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
The M23 mutineers are Tutsi ex-rebels from the Rwandan-backed National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP).
They were integrated into the regular army in 2009 as part of a peace deal that followed their failed 2008 offensive on Goma.
But they mutinied in April, demanding better pay and the full implementation of the March 23, 2009 peace deal for which they are named.
The biannual summit also aimed to discuss the continent's hotspots as elections for the bloc's top job overshadowed the agenda.
South Africa's Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma is challenging the sitting chairman of the commission, Gabon's Jean Ping, after neither won the required two-thirds of the vote at the last summit six months ago, leaving Ping in the post.
Both candidates have issued strongly worded public statements ahead of Sunday's vote.
Last week, Ping dismissed South African media reports that he was quitting to allow Dlamini-Zuma to stand unopposed, prompting the Southern African Development Community to accuse him of abusing AU resources in his election bid.
Analysts say that by unwritten tradition, continental powerhouses do not run for the post — leaving smaller nations to take the job — and that South Africa's decision to override this rule has sparked bad feeling.
If no chair is selected this time around, Ping — who has held the post since 2008 -—could legally be asked to stay on as leader until the next summit in January 2013.
Security issues are also a top priority at the gathering, with leaders focusing on instability in Mali, renewed violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the ongoing crisis between Sudan and South Sudan.
Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir and South Sudanese President Salva Kiir embraced each other as leaders filed into the summit room, following their first face-to-face talks late Saturday since border clashes in April and March.
The meeting is being held in the Ethiopian capital after Malawi's new president Joyce Banda refused to host Al Bashir, wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes and genocide charges.
