Washington: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flies on Tuesday to Addis Ababa to consult regional leaders and ministers about how to defuse tensions and conflicts in the Horn of Africa, the Great Lakes and Sudan.

Rice will join leaders of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in the Ethiopian capital on Wednesday to tackle the "negative forces" in the Great Lakes region, US officials said.

"I want to lower your expectations that this meeting will result in...(renegade General Laurent) Nkunda and FDLR all leaving," Rice's pointwoman on African affairs, Jendayi Frazer, told reporters in a pre-visit briefing.

Rice is expected to discuss existing security mechanisms, including a DRC-Rwandan plan to disarm the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, which has been implicated in the 1994 genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda.

Another source of instability is Nkunda who claims to protect the minority Tutsi population. The troubled eastern province of Nord-Kivu has seen heavy clashes since the end of August between some 4,000 insurgents loyal to the former general and more than 20,000 troops serving under DRC President Laurent Kabila.

Yet another destabilising force is the Ugandan rebel Lords Resistance Army, which hides out in the DRCongo. Frazer, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, said the summit will build on a US-backed regional approach to help "build the capacity of the Congolese to address these negative forces in their country."

Source : PTI