Angolan Capital To Host Summit Of Leaders Of Africa's Great Lakes Region

LUANDA, Jan 9 - The Angolan capital will play host from Friday until Jan 15 to the 5th Ordinary Summit of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR ) to discuss peace, stability and development in the 12-nation grouping stretching across central Africa from the Atlantic to the Indian Oceans.

A source at the Foreign Ministry here told ANGOP Wednesday that members of some delegations were already in Luanda to attend Friday's meetings of the grouping's Heads of Army General Staff and of the Chiefs of Intelligence Services.

On Saturday, ICGLR defence ministers will hold their meeting and this will be followed by a meeting of the National Co-ordinators on Sunday and Monday. Tuesday will see the meeting of the Regional Inter-Ministerial Committee.

The leaders of the region are expected in the country on Tuesday and on Wednesday morning will gather at the Talatona Centre, south of Luanda, for their summit to discuss the peace and security situation in the region. Angola will assume the chair of the ICGLR at the summit.

The ICGLR was created after the political conflicts that marked the Great Lakes region in 1994, whose result marked the recognition of their size and the need for a concerted effort aimed at promoting peace and development in the region.

The ICGLR executive secretariat is based since May 2007, in Bujumbura, Burundi, and has the function of co-ordinating, facilitating and ensuring the implementation of the pact to create the conditions of peace, security, political stability and development in the Great Lakes region.

The current executive secretary is from th Democratic Republic of Congo, elected in December 2011, and the chairmanship of the ICGLR is with Uganda since 2011.

The ICGLR members are Angola , Burundi , Central African Republic (CAR ), Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo ( DRC ), Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania and Zambia.

BERNAMA-NNN-ANGOP