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BUKAVU, Congo — Rwanda-backed rebels have "occupied" a second major city in mineral-rich eastern Congo, Congo's government said Sunday, as M23 rebels positioned themselves at the governor's office in Bukavu and pledged to clean up after the "old regime." Associated Press journalists witnessed scores of residents cheering on the rebels after they entered Bukavu following a dayslong march from Goma, a city of 2 million people they seized last month. The rebels saw little resistance from government forces against the unprecedented expansion of their reach after their years of fighting. Congo's government vowed to restore order in Bukavu, a city...

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,...

Congo The battle lines are redrawn, again Jun 10th 2004 | BUKAVU From The Economist print edition Though the rebels have withdrawn, they haven't given up on war THE Congolese rebels made no apology for their murder, rape and pillage. But, as they withdrew this week from Bukavu, eastern Congo's biggest town, they did concede that their week-long occupation of it had been a “mistake”. Their leader, Brigadier-General Laurent Nkunda, said he had been “mis-led” into thinking that the national army had been massacring Congolese members of his own Tutsi ethnic group in Bukavu. With that, General Nkunda's columns of...