Originally published by the Voice of America (www.voanews.com).
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July 10, 2007

US Secretary of State Adds DRC to Africa, Mideast Trip
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http://enews.voanews.com/t?ctl=1819050:A6F02AD83191E160E515915DC20F0E009574F7DCC14957C0 Condoleezza Rice's
stop in Democratic Republic of Congo will be highest-level US visit
since former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright went there in 1997
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has added a stop in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo to the trip to the Middle East,
Africa and Europe she makes next week. Rice also attends a trade
conference in the Ghanaian capital, Accra. VOA's David Gollust reports
from the State Department.







Condoleezza Rice, 9 Jul 2007Rice is expected to spend several hours in
Kinshasa next Wednesday in what will be the highest-level U.S. visit
to the Democratic Republic of the Congo since former Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright went there in 1997.

The huge resource-rich country of central Africa is still afflicted by
civil warfare in its remote eastern region. But overall violence has
subsided in recent years and President Joseph Kabila won a two-stage
election in December that made him the country's first
democratically-elected leader in over 40 years.

Announcing the Rice visit at a news briefing, State Department
Spokesman Sean McCormack said it is intended to highlight the progress
made in a country where more than three million people died as a
result of political violence in the past decade:

"There's been a transition of power that was at points somewhat
contentious, yet the political process emerged," he said. "So we
wanted to mark that event and mark the fact that this is a country
that has made progress in trying to develop democratic institutions
after emerging from a long period of conflict. And it's also an
important country in the region, in central Africa."

McCormack acknowledged continuing trouble spots along the country's
borders, especially in the eastern Great Lakes region where a U.N.
mission of 17,000 peacekeepers is centered.

After visiting Kinshasa, Rice is to go to the Ghanaian capital, Accra,
for a regional forum bringing together the 38 sub-Saharan African
countries of AGOA, the African Growth and Opportunity Act.

The measure, approved by the U.S. Congress in 2000 allows the African
countries to ship most goods to the United States tariff-free and it
is credited with fueling a nearly 150 percent increase in U.S. trade
with the region since its inception.

Rice begins the trip next Monday and stops first in Jerusalem and
Ramallah in the West Bank for meetings with Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

It comes in the wake of the rout of Abbas loyalists in Gaza by
fighters of the militant Islamic group Hamas and the breakdown of a
unity government between Hamas and the Mr. Abbas' mainstream Fatah
movement.

Though it meant the capture of one of the two parts of an envisaged
Palestinian state by a group listed by the United States as a
terrorist organization, McCormack insisted the prognosis for peace
efforts is far from bleak:

"We think that the underlying conditions now, at present, are better
than they have been at any other time in the recent past," he said.
"But whether or not that promise is actually realized is going to
depend ultimately on the parties, the Israelis and Palestinians, and
their willingness to seek to bridge any differences, to come together
and realize that this is going to be in both of their long-term
interests."

McCormack said Hamas and Fatah need to reconcile for themselves the
political path they want to take. He said in the 18 months left in the
Bush administration Secretary Rice will press for a regional
settlement as hard as she can.

Rice's final stop before returning home July 20 will be Portugal,
which currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union.
She will meet with Portuguese leaders in Lisbon, where officials here
say a meeting of the four-power international Quartet on the Middle
East is also a possibility.


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