Word: congoes
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...leaders have always been more frequent visitors to Africa than their Western peers, but President Nicolas Sarkozy looks set to eclipse them all in trips to the continent. On Thursday, Sarkozy began his fifth African sojourn in less than three years with a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a violence-plagued Central African nation that of which most Western officials steer well clear. His goal? To sell his ambitious plan economic cooperation aimed at bring peace to some of the region's embattled countries - and in the process restore French influence in Africa...
...suspicion. The French president kicked off his three-nation swing through the Great Lakes region in Kinshasa, where he praised President Joseph Kabila for reaching agreement in January with leaders of neighboring Rwanda to launch joint military operations against militia groups fighting both regimes from strongholds in eastern Congo. The result, Sarkozy noted, has been an a halt to the massacres that have forced tens of thousands of civilians to flee the area. (See pictures of war and displacement in Congo...
...Africa's First World War. Regional power plays had a role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide that killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus - an outrage that the current Rwandan government accuses France of helping to enable. And the fallout from the Rwandan genocide has continued to plague Eastern Congo, where it has produced periodic massacres in the intervening years. Deep-seated hostilities across the region's fragile borders have prompted many in Congo to denounce the January agreement which allows Rwandan troops to operate inside the DRC, accusing Kabila of joining arms with the Rwandan enemy and openly challenging...
...assisting the Hutu genocide effort, insisting Paris wants to cleanse its own guilt by casting Tutsi rebels who halted the massacre as the culprits behind it. Critics in the DRC see Sarkozy's resource-sharing idea as a French plan to get back into Rwandan good graces at Congo's expense. (See more pictures of Congo...
...Sarkozy also plans to visit Brazzaville, capital of the neighboring Republic of Congo, and Niger, in search of business opportunities for French companies. French commentators have noted how such business-as-usual tightness with African cronies, whose track record on democracy and human rights often leaves much to be desired, contrasts with Sarkozy's earlier pledges to break with Paris' traditional Françafrique policy of turning a blind eye to authoritarianism and corruption to maintain healthy relations with stable African allies. (See pictures of the Pope's recent visit to Africa...