/ 6 August 1998

US military team seen on Congo border

TRISH MURPHY, Johannesburg | Wednesday 9.00PM.

A TEAM of United States military personnel is in Rwanda, according to a report confirmed by the Pentagon. The 12 soldiers, part of an “assessment team”, were seen in the vicinity of the Gisenyi border post, which is close to Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Goma was the first town to fall to rebels seeking to overthrow DRC President Laurent Kabila in the uprising which started on Sunday. The rebels are said to be Bamyamulenge, or Congolese Tsutsi, members of the DRC armed forces. Earlier reports, however, indicated that Rwandan troops had crossed into Goma early on Tuesday.

Rwandan security forces who did not wish to be named have said that the US personnel also crossed into DRC accompanied by Rwandan army officers.

However Colonel Nancy Burt of the Pentagon told the eM&G, via the US Embassy in Pretoria, that the US team, the Rwanda Interagency Assessment Team, was at Gisenyi on Monday, and was now back in Kigali. To her knowledge none of the US personnel had crossed over into the DRC.

Meanwhile the DRC foreign minister, Bizima Karaha, was sacked by the Kinshasa government on Wednesday morning after making a statement to The Star newspaper in South Africa in which he said that Kabila “has become as bad a dictator in one year as Mobutu became in 32 years”. Karaha has since flown into Goma, which is under rebel control.