KINSHASA (AFP) - Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila said he would travel to the country's formerly rebel-held and still restive east next week, his first trip there since coming to power in 2001.
"The trip to the east was planned for last year, but because there were incidents, there and in Kinshasa, I was unable to make the journey," Kabila told a news conference.
"The trip is scheduled for next week," he added, without specifying an exact date but saying the 10-day trip would take in the towns of Kisangani, Kindu, Bukavu, Goma, Butembo, and Beni as well as the powderkeg northeastern region of Ituri and Equateur province in the northwest.
Since the official end in July last year of DRC's devastaing 1998-2003 war, Kinshasa has striven to win back control of the east of the vast country in the face of resistance from former rebels which neighbouring Rwanda backed during the conflict.
The main rebel group, the Congolese Rally for Democracy, had its headquarters in Goma.
In May and June of this year, former rebels supposedly integrated into a new post-war army rose up in the east, clashing with regular troops and briefly taking control of the eastern town of Bukavu.
Interethnic violence has ravaged Ituri since 1999, claiming more than 50,000 lives and forcing more than half a million people from their homes.
"Since the war, the president has never been to the east. People have to be reassured. He has never congratulated the people for resisting the aggressor," said Kabila's spoksman Kasongo Kadura, adding that the first stop on the president's tour would be Kisangani, followed by Kindu.