DAR ES SALAAM (AFP) - Fifteen African presidents and UN chief Kofi Annan signed a common declaration pledging to promote peace and security in the continent`s volatile Great Lakes region.
Annan heralded the move as a "an important step towards peace."
The declaration calling for the region`s transformation into a area of "sustainable peace and security, of political and social stability, of shared growth and development" was signed at a landmark conference in Dar es Salaam.
The signatories were 14 African presidents from the Great Lakes region and beyond, as well as UN Secretary General Annan and Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, attending in his capacity as African Union chairman.
On Friday, the first day of the conference, Annan called on the presidents to widen the declaration into a global peace accord for the Great Lakes.
The region notably includes the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) which has hardly known peace and stability since its independence in 1960; Rwanda, whose 1994 genocide caused repercussions still felt to this day; Burundi, which is struggling to emerge from 11 years of civil conflict; and Uganda, the north of which has been ravaged by a rebel conflict since the mid 1980s.
"We have just witnessed an important step towards peace in the Great Lakes region," Annan told reporters before the conference closed on Saturday.
"Leaders who had spent much of the past decade divided by deep political and other disagreements, or even facing each other directly or by proxy in armed conflict, have come together behind a common vision of peace," Annan said.
Attending the conference were the presidents of Burundi, the Central African Republic, DRC, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, the Republic of Congo, Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
"Leaders have shown real commitment in signing this declaration, but the real test starts now, as they turn to designing the framework of the implementation phase, to be launched after the second summit in Nairobi," Annan told the news conference, held jointly with Obasanjo and Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa.
Another conference of Great Lakes leaders is scheduled to be held in the Kenyan capital in June next year.
The Great Lakes conference was first conceived by the UN Security Council in 1994, after some 800,000 people, most of them minority Tutsis, were killed in Rwanda`s genocide.
Continuing unrest had prevented the summit from taking place until now -- with the forces of half a dozen countries in the region dragged into the 1998-2003 war in the DRC, which led to the deaths of millions of people.
"Many countries have shown great interest in the meeting, clearly showing how millions of people in the region are tired of wars and civil strife," Tanzanian Deputy Foreign Minister Abdulkader Shareef told AFP.
The summit`s host, President Mkapa, said: "We want to bring to a close a sad chapter in our history, a chapter characterised by conflict, social disharmony and missed economic opportunities.
"The Dar es Salaam declaration proclaims to the world that our region is not, and must not be seen to be, inherently unstable and prone to conflict," he said.
Meanwhile, Obasanjo recalled that the region had "gone through very traumatic and dehumanising events ranging from genocide in Rwanda, violent conflicts in many member states, causing massive refugees and internally displaced populations estimated at about 6.2 million."
"We have decided that the enshrinement of the rule of law, human rights, and tenets of good governance shall be our guiding principles in the spirit of transparency and accountability," he said.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni also called for economic transformation in the region, from an agrarian system to an industrialised one, as one of the solutions to endemic ethnic conflicts in the area.
"We have many people struggling for land to cultivate crops. This brings about unnecessary tension on land and industrialisation can help a lot," he said.
11/20/2004 - 18:08 GMT - AFP