After her meeting with the National Assembly deputies and its president Vital Kamerhe on 23 April 2007, Deputy Secretary General Dr. Asha Rose Migiro said that it gave her a 'great feeling of joy and victory.'

Dr. Migiro told the press that ‘as an African at the top level of UN leadership, I thought I should come here and see these gains for myself, and one of the big gains is this august Assembly and the members of parliament that you see with me here.’

“As a Deputy Secretary General and as an African daughter I feel very proud. I carry with me a strong feeling of triumph, having seen the efforts of the National Assembly and its president in promoting reconciliation and dialogue in a bid for unity and to strengthen democracy in the DRC. That gives me a great feeling, a feeling of joy, a feeling of victory,” she explained.

After a subsequent meeting with the Minster of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, the Deputy Secretary General said all those she had talked to were ‘proud that the DRC elections were held in a free and fair manner.’

She said that the recent March violence in Kinshasa, although regrettable, is ‘something that can still be an incentive for the country to consolidate the peace dividends and to put in place mechanisms and institutions that will ensure that human rights thrive, and that democracy continues.’

This, Dr. Migiro said, ‘will enable the Congolese people to sit down and to pick up the challenges, and put in place programmes to ensure that they overcome the immense social and economic problems that the country is facing.’

She added that all parties she had spoken to ‘agree that there cannot be any alternative to dialogue and reconciliation.’

“This has emerged very clearly, particularly in my discussions with the president of the National Assembly, members of parliament of the opposition and the majority. This is a great encouragement to the United Nations, given the fact that the United Nations is one of the interlocutors who has invested heavily in the DRC in terms of the democratic process and development agenda.”

Finally, the Deputy Secretary General said that the UN can give a guarantee of its ‘engaged presence in the DRC, and a readiness to continue to work with the Congolese people and its government.’

Another guarantee, she said, was that the Congolese themselves have demonstrated that ‘they want the path of democracy and peace’, by voting peacefully in last years elections.

“They have shown that they want to take the path of stability and peace and there cannot be a better guarantee than the will of the Congolese people and the political will of its leadership be it from the opposition or from the majority,” Dr. Migiro concluded.

Today, Dr. Migiro will meet with the head of the Independent Electoral Commission, Fr. Apollinaire Malu Malu, and will address MONUC staff at a town hall meeting in the afternoon.