Congo News Agency

MPs will discuss today the deal that the Congolese government signed with the Chinese government regarding the financing of several projects around the country to be paid off with natural resources.  The debate was supposed to take place on Thursday but was postponed to Friday amid suspicions from some MPs that the government is not interested in transparency when it comes to the contracts signed with China.

Some MPs were furious that there was no coverage of the discussions by the RTNC government –owned television station which was said to be due to technical difficulties.  MPs want the discussions to be broadcast live on national television.

Ministers of Public Works and Infrastructure, Mines, Finance and Budget are scheduled to go before Member of Parliament and respond to their questions about the contracts.

Since being announced there has not been a lot of details about the deal. The government argues that these kind of deals take a lot of time to be finalized.

There has been some concerns from traditional development partners of the Congo such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank about the impact of the deal on other development projects in the country.

The former Defense Minister in the transitional period was attacked last night by three armed men in the Ngaliema district of Kinshasa. According to his assistant, he was hit by bullets on his legs after one of his attackers fired on him as he was trying to fend off the attack. 

The president of the Parliament Vital Kamerhe briefing MPs on Mr. Onusumba’s condition said that his life was no longer in danger after he received medical care in Kinshasa and a bullet was removed from his leg. Mr. Onusumba was flown to South Africa to receive further medial care.  

Onusumba is an MP representing Lodja in the Kasai Oriental province. He is a member of the RCD political party and a former Defense Minister under the power-sharing deal that was put in place between the government and former rebels during the transitional period that led to nationwide elections in 2006.

President Joseph Kabila signed a decree raising the daily minimum wage on Wednesday. The new minimum wage across the country will be set to 1,120 Congolese Francs ($2US) starting June 1, 2008 and will go up to 1,680 ($3US) on January 1, 2009.

Coming on the eve of May Day, the hike was welcomed with muted enthusiasm by some employees. The government has never been able to enforce minimum wage laws. Some employees agree to work for less than the official minimum wage because they fear they may get fired if they requested more money.

The Federation of Congolese Employers (FEC) also expressed reservations about the hike. It noted that employers are already dealing with an economic slump due to the rise of oil and food prices. The FEC asked the government to lower the tax burden on employers in order to offset the cost of the hike.

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The International Criminal Court made public on Tuesday an arrest warrant for Congolese militia leader Bosco Ntaganda. The warrant was delivered on August 22 2006 and kept under seal until now.

Bosco Ntaganda, known as “The Terminator”, is accused of forceful enrollment of children under the age of 15 for military service in the Ituri region. The warrant alleges that these children received military training from the Forces patriotiques pour la libération du Congo (FPLC) in training camps in Bule, Cantrale, Mandro, Rwampara, Irumu, Bogoro and Sota.

The IIC has previously issued three other arrest warrants related to the situation in eastern Congo. Thomas Lubanga, Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ndgudjolo are already in custody and waiting to stand trial.

Bosco Ntaganda is said to be active now in Kivu provinces where he continues to commit war crimes. He is said to have taken the position of Chief of Staff in the CNDP militia group headed by Laurent Nkunda. The CNDP has been accused of numerous war crimes in the Kivu provinces which are now under investigation by the ICC.

The ICC prosecutor asked “all concerned States authorities and actors to contribute to his arrest and surrender him to the Court”.

Bas-Congo province Member of Parliament Yves Kisombe was expelled from the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC) on Thursday. He had taken positions which went against the party line, In March, he distanced himself from the position of the MLC during a debate in the National Assembly on the actions of the government against the Bundu Dia Kongo (BDK) political and religious movement in the Bas-Congo province.

An inquiry was launched by the leaders of the party and a disciplinary commission was put in place to decide his fate. The commission recommended that he should be expelled from the party.

He is accused of insubordination, failure to comply with the party line, damage to the image of the party, and of taking actions detrimental to the interests and fundamental objectives of the party.

The MLC, led by its Secretary General Francois Mwamba, also a Member of Parliament, said it will now ask the Supreme Court to strip Yves Kisombe of his seat in the National Assembly. However it is unclear if the Supreme Court has the authority to force him out. A provision of Article 110 of the Constitution states that a Member of Parliament can lose her or his seat if she or he voluntarily quits her or his party.

The leader of the MLC, Jean-Pierre Bemba, had also asked for his expulsion after what he called the “cut-throat” positions taken by Yves Kisombe on behalf of the MLC during last month’s debate on the BDK.

Jean-Pierre Bemba may soon also be expelled from the Senate because of his prolonged absence from the Upper Chamber of Parliament. He has been in exile in Portugal since leaving the country in April 2007 after his soldiers fought against President Kabila’s guards on the streets of Kinshasa in March 2007. The government has since said it intends to charge him with treason. The MLC has asked for a political solution.

In an interview published in the Belgian newspaper Le Soir on Wednesday, President Joseph Kabila said he did not appreciate the message brought to him by three Belgian ministers visiting the Congo this week. Joseph Kabila met twice with Karel De Gucht (Foreign Affairs), Charles Michel (Cooperation) and Pieter de Crem (Defense) on Tuesday. The Belgian government has said that the ministers were speaking on behalf of the government.

President Kabila is quoted as saying that “Belgium must make a choice on the type of relationship it wants to have with the Democratic Republic of Congo. It has a choice between having good relations as partners in a mature relationship with a sovereign and independent state or a master-slave relationship”.

He said that “I will note that every time a Belgian delegation is led by the minister of foreign affairs; it is with a lot of arrogance, as if our visitors are coming here to lecture us. This is unacceptable. The Congo will never accept this, definitely not me”.

President Kabila said that among the topics discussed was the request by the Democratic Republic of Congo that the expert on Human Rights mandate not be renewed. The United Nations Human Rights Council discontinued the post in March. Belgian newspapers have reported that Belgian government had asked the Congolese government not to make such a request. Other human rights organizations and NGOs have decried the decision.

The Congolese government was supported by other African nations led by Egypt at the meeting. These countries argued that human rights experts should only be appointed by the Human Rights Council when the government of the country at issue agrees the situation warrants one.

On this issue President Kabila said: “Aren’t we a sovereign country? Our decisions are based on our interest, our policies and the development of our country”. “A special human rights observer here? Why only here and not in other African countries? ”.

Belgium has lost a lot of the influence it once held in the Congo as a former colonial power. New players such as China and South Africa are eager to invest in the vast mineral-rich country without asking a lot of questions about human rights, democracy or corruption.

Asked if the Congo still had a special relationship with Belgium, President Kabila replied that “Yes, but Belgium is primarily a partner. Myself, well I hope that Belgium will always be a friend, a friendly country, with which I personally have no problem. But a year and a half after the elections, you cannot deal with the Democratic Republic of Congo as if we were in the nineties which were marked by the National Sovereign Conference, the transition, wars and so on. You should know that the Congo has completely changed, and that is the starting point: there is a legitimate power in place. Even before, I could not accept that people deal with our country as if it was still a colony”.

Asked if the incident with Belgium was closed, President Kabila replied that “There was no incident, because I did not want one, there was only the beginning of an incident, something like a provocation. I only know that in Angola, South Africa, Tanzania, Sudan and elsewhere, if the Belgian delegation carried a message like the one it did here, it would have been forced to leave. This is the last time I agreed to receive a delegation carrying such a message. The next time there will certainly have an incident”.

Source: Interviewed by Collette Brackman, Le Soir

Authorities in Goma were scrambling to take care of more than 100 people injured after a Hewa Bora Airways plane crashed into a market in Goma on Wednesday. The death toll now stands at 40 and more than 20 people are still missing. People were lining up at the city’s morgue to find out if their loved ones were among the dead.

The president of the National Assembly Vital Kamerhe announced during a special session of parliament that the government had decided to cancel an ongoing doctors’ strike in Goma and doctors were being flown in from Bukavu and Kinshasa to help care for the injured.

President Joseph Kabila expressed “deep consternation” over the disaster and called for an investigation to determine the cause of the crash.