![http://www.dsarms.com/images/paracongo.gif"](http://www.dsarms.com/images/paracongo.gif"){kind=link}
Posted on 06/21/2004 6:22:37 PM PDT by BenLurkin
KINSHASA, Congo (AP) - Congo on Monday denied claims by rival and neighbor Rwanda that it was massing troops for attack, and international diplomatic pressure built to avert what one African leader called a "potentially catastrophic war" in central Africa. Congo's defense minister told The Associated Press that his country was sending a total of 5,000 troops east to provinces bordering Rwanda, Congo's chief enemy in a devastating five-year central African war - but insisted the deployment was to quell ex-rebels on Congo's soil, not to invade Rwanda.
"We are not threatening the integrity of our neighboring country. We trust our neighbor and we want them to trust us," Defense Minister Jean-Pierre Ondekane said in Kinshasa, the capital.
"Congo is not going to attack Rwanda," Foreign Minister Antoine Ghonda told the AP.
U.S. officials expressed deep concern over the developments and dispatched a key State Department official in a bid to defuse tensions.
Monday's assurances followed three weeks of accusations, counteraccusations and denials between Rwanda and Congo, foes in a 1998-2002 war fought in Congo.
That conflict embroiled the armies of at least four other African nations, split Africa's third-largest nation, and killed an estimated 3.3 million people, most through famine and disease.
The current crisis represents the greatest threat to the fledgling peace, and to a 14-month-old interim government assembled from loyalists, ex-rebels and opposition figures after international pressure helped force out foreign armies and end fighting.
The east and northeast, de facto rebel states during the war, remain volatile.
The latest tensions erupted June 2, when two renegade former Rwanda-backed rebel commanders seized Bukavu, a Congolese city at the Rwandan border.
Government forces routed the renegade forces from Bukavu by June 9, but running battles with forces of renegade Col. Jules Mutebutsi persist in and around nearby towns, the United Nations says.
A U.N. helicopter gunship rocketed renegade fighters north of Bukavu after taking fire, a spokesman for the 10,800-member U.N. peace force in Congo said Monday.
"It was Mutebutsi's fighters who fired, and we responded with 14 rockets to discourage them," said Abou Thiam, a spokesman in Kinshasa for the United Nation's 10,800-member Congo mission.
U.N. forces received no injuries in Sunday's clash near the town of Kamanyola, and had no information on rebel casualties, Thiam said.
The U.N. Congo mission was speeding up deployment of 3,700 South African, Uruguayan and Nepalese forces to help the government secure eastern border provinces, U.N. spokesman Sebastien LaPierre said in Bukavu.
Congo itself had sent a "few thousand" troops to the east since trouble reopened, LaPierre said.
The number appeared fewer than the 10,000 Congolese reinforcements cited in some reports, the U.N. spokesman said.
Rwanda's foreign minister charged Saturday that Congo's troop movements east were preparations for invasion.
Calling the deployments "a big threat" to his country, Rwanda Foreign Minister Charles Muligande said, "Certainly we would not sit back and watch those developments."
Congo has leveled its own accusations, charging that Rwanda was readying for attack and that Rwandan troops already had infiltrated.
Fears built of renewed civil war between government and ex-rebel forces in the east, rebel territory throughout the five-year conflict - or of generalized war across the region.
In Johannesburg, South African President Thabo Mbeki - a key broker in Congo's peace and power-share deals - expressed alarm, warning of "potentially catastrophic war" between Congo and Rwanda.
At the U.S. Embassy in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, political affairs officer Eric Wong said U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell had talked to presidents Joseph Kabila of Congo and Paul Kagame of Rwanda this month to urge restraint.
Washington was sending a top official from the African affairs bureau, Donald Yamamoto, to the region to try to defuse rising tensions, said State Department press officer Brenda Greenberg.
"We are deeply concerned about the buildup of force in Eastern Congo," Greenberg said. "Hard-won efforts to bring peace the Congo are endangered by a major expansion of rebel and government forces in and around the city of Bukavu and other areas in the eastern Congo."
Americans were particularly concerned about offers by Angola and Tanzania to provide Congo with military support, another U.S. diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
Congo also received pledges of South African military assistance securing the east and northeast over the weekend.
Tensions on both sides of the border showed no signs of slackening Monday, despite the mild words from Congolese officials.
"Congo would like a normalization of relations with all its neighbors," Ghonda, the foreign minister, said. "We are trying to make sure the insurgents are incapable of causing more harm."
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Well, I am sure happy we threw out all the whites and removed any vestiges of western civilation. Things are much better now that the natives are running the show...
Unfortunately we apparently don't live in the United States; we are not protected by the Bill of Rights.
Well, it is a shame...
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