UN Secretary General Ban Ki- moon said on Monday in a statement that he is heartened that tensions in the Great Lakes Region in Africa have eased in the past year.

Olusegun Obasanjo, the special envoy of Ban Ki-moon, delivered the speech on behalf of the UN chief at the ongoing Third Ordinary Summit of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR), which opened on Monday in Lusaka, Zambia.

The special envoy said that the UN chief in particular welcomes last week's summit between President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) and President Paul Kagame of Rwanda.

(Xinhua News Agency August 10, 2009)