Posted on 12/01/2004 8:32:33 PM PST by NormsRevenge
GOMA, Congo - U.N. observers encountered what they believed to be about 100 Rwandan troops in eastern Congo, a U.N. official said Wednesday, marking the first reported U.N. sightings since Rwanda threatened to send in its forces against Rwanda Hutu rebels sheltering here.
The suspected Rwandan forces withdrew toward Rwanda after Tuesday's encounter, said M'hand Ladjouzi, head of the U.N. mission at Goma. He spoke at a news conference in Goma, the largest city of the east.
A Rwandan diplomat denied Rwanda had invaded again, after a week of warnings that raised fears of a return to the six-nation war that devastated Congo, Africa's third-largest nation.
But the denial came even as a Western envoy in Kinshasa, Congo's capital, said Rwandan President Paul Kagame warned that Rwandan troops would carry out "surgical strikes" against rebels in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites).
In the letter, which circulated among embassies in Congo on Wednesday, Kagame said military operations would last two weeks, according to the envoy, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
U.N. officials in Kinshasa said they had no knowledge of the letter.
The U.N. Security Council scheduled closed-door consultations Thursday in response to Congo's request for an emergency meeting. Congo has asked the council to condemn Rwanda's threat and impose sanctions finding Kagame "personally responsible for the threat posed to the sovereignty of Congo and to the entire peace process in the region."
Kagame told Rwandan lawmakers Tuesday that Rwanda would act against 8,000-10,000 Rwanda Hutu rebels based in east Congo, saying a five-month-old U.N.-led disarmament program had failed to neutralize the Rwandan Hutu rebel forces.
In Kinshasa, Congo's capital, U.N. spokeswoman Patricia Tome said Wednesday that Rwanda's threat "astonished" the U.N. mission in Congo, as it came at a time when authorities hoped to speed up the U.N.-led disarmament effort.
U.S. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli urged Rwanda and Congo "to solve their differences diplomatically and not militarily, through the exchange of gunfire or the movement of troops in the area."
Until Wednesday, U.N. officials said extensive sweeps by their more than 11,000-strong force in Congo had turned up no signs of Rwandan incursions since Rwanda's threat.
Small-scale infiltrations by Rwanda since foreign armies formally withdrew from Congo's war "are not new. Of course, it's taking different dimensions now," Ladjouzi said. "But this gives the impression of an act of aggression," he said.
A joint patrol with Congolese troops last week arrested nine Rwandan troops who remain in Congolese custody, he said.
He did not say what the suspected 100 Rwandan forces were doing when the U.N. observers encountered them, whether they were armed, and how they were traveling.
Tome said the sighting was at Rutshuru, a town a few miles inside Congo.
Ladjouzi said U.N. forces also were investigating reports of three villages being burned between Rutshuru and Lubero.
Large numbers of Rwandan Hutu rebels have begun moving west out of the Rutshuru region, sending civilians fleeing, Ladjouzi said. Rwandan forces did not cause those refugee flights, he said.
"If Rwandan forces target the civilian population, MONUC will take action," he said, using the U.N. acronym for its mission in Congo.
Rwanda invaded eastern Congo in 1996 and 1998 to hunt down Rwandan Hutu combatants responsible for the 1994 genocide of more than a half-million Tutsis and Hutus.
The 1998 invasion sparked a war that drew in four other African nations and split Western Europe-sized Congo. Some 3.2 million people died, most through famine and disease.
Peace accords by 2002 saw the withdrawal of foreign armies and establishment of a power-sharing government.
Not to worry, the U.N.'s M'hand Ladjouzi is in charge of the sightings. Are the Hutus coming after the Tutus again?
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