Posted on 06/13/2004 11:04:24 AM PDT by propertius
Kigali - General Laurent Nkunda, a leader of dissident troops in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, threatened the government with war on Sunday unless it sets up a commission to deal with alleged crimes against his ethnic group.
"If no commission of enquiry is created, we'll go back to Bukavu and we'll be at war with the government," Nkunda told AFP in neighbouring Rwanda by telephone. "We will wait until tomorrow (Monday)."
Nkunda, one of two officers whose mainly former rebel soldiers took the eastern town of Bukavu between June 2 and 9 in fighting which claimed about 90 lives, at the time said he was doing so to protect his ethnic group.
The general is a Banyamulenge, a Congolese Tutsi, who also formerly served as an officer in the Rwandan army. He said he wanted word from Azarias Ruberwa, a rebel leader turned one of the DRC's four vice presidents.
'If no commission of enquiry is created, we'll go back to Bukavu' "Unfortunately, they're still burning the houses of Banyamulenge in Bukavu," the general alleged, repeating a charge of abuses he gave as his reason for seizing the town under the nose of hundreds of United Nations peacekeeping troops.
The UN soldiers have a mandate to fire, but either to protect civilians or in self-defence. However, in Kinshasa, spokesmen for the UN mission to DRC, MONUC, said the United Nations had helped mediate Nkunda's withdrawal from the town.
He pulled out his forces saying that he had been mistaken in his understanding that "massacres" of Banyamulenge were taking place.
The Kinshasa government has accused Rwanda of being behind the seizure of Bukavu, the capital of Sund-Kivu province, in a move which was seen as a threat to the UN-monitored peace process which has begun in DRC after five years of war.
"I'm waiting for Ruberwa to give me last word, otherwise I start mobilising again and there will be a fight with Kinshasa," Nkunda said, adding that he was speaking from Minova, 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of Goma, the capital of Nord-Kivu province on the Rwandan border.
Bukavu also lies hard by the frontier with Rwanda, which gave Ruberwa's Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD) backing during the DRC war. That conflict has been estimated to have cost up to 2.5 million lives, directly or indirectly through famine and disease.
DRC regular government troops marched into Bukavu to the applause of large numbers of the local population after the renegades left, but the US-based Human Rights Watch said in a weekend report that both sides had committed serious rights violations against civilians.
Nkunda has been allied with Colonel Jules Mutebusi, a former deputy army chief in Bukavu who had been suspended from his post after a military insurgency earlier this year.
On Saturday, the DRC army chief in Kinshasa, Major General Sylvain Buki, reported further fighting in and around Kamanyola, 40 kilometres south of Bukavu.
"There has been fighting there for the last four days between the regular army and Mutebusi's people," Buki said, without giving casualty figures.
An African Union team spent Saturday night in Bukavu to talk to local officials, including the newly appointed governor, his deputy, and DRC army and MONUC representatives in the town.
AU mission leader Mame Dialy Sy of Senegal told journalists that the team had "come to take a look for ourselves".
The AU Peace and Security Council, the continental equivalent of the UN Security Council, has "condemned what happened in Sud-Kivu" and deplores "the violations of human dignity, the loss in human lives and the violations of human rights" during the fighting for the town, Dialy Sy said.
Nkunda told AFP that he was loyal to Kinshasa but "since we're unilaterally regarded as dissidents, now we're going to seek a lasting solution."
"I'm still ready to support Colonel Mutebusi, we're still working together," he said.
"I think that soon we will liberate the east of the Congo," Nkunda said, while denying he wanted the country partitioned.
Asked about his ties with Rwanda, Nkunda said: "I don't if Kigali will be our ally."
On the bright side the mainstream American press may actually cover this one, since there's a Republican in office.
"On the bright side the mainstream American press may actually cover this one"
Yeah, but I'll bet they follow their habitual practice of assigning euphemisms until you can't tell who is fighting whom over what.
This Laurent dude is a "dissident?" What does that mean? It's in the "Democratic Republic" of Congo, so I figure that must be at least putatively communist, and a tyranny. But what is he dissenting against?
Who is backing the DRC now, and who is backing their enemies? I'm sure a lot of the strife is tribal, but other countries are certainly stirring up trouble for their own ends.
I'm retired from the military and so don't have access to any classified material any more, so I don't have any idea what the true situation is over there.
The autocratic dictatorship in Rwanda, aggressive plunderers and murderers of hundres of thousands in neighbouring Congo in the last 8 years, back the Laurent dude. So he da badguy.
Last year a transitional government was formed to end the last war. It incorporated all da bad guys from the last war. But because it represents the best chance of peace, although dey bad, dey less bad than the laurent dude!
Okay, I think I'm starting to get a bead on it.
No real good guys in sight. Just really awful guys, and not quite so awful guys.
Are there any foreign troops involved?
yep Rwandans almost certainly. Uganda could be pushing too. In past we've had invasions also from Burundi, Chad, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Angola. They seem to be staying out for the moment. Zimbabwe government cronies of Mugane still plundering though in Katanga...
Are you presently in The Congo ?
yes, but hope to be getting out tomorrow for a few weeks and heading out of Africa for first time in over four years. Hurray! Very excited.
Habari. Nice to see another Kenyan floating through cyber ether.
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