Pretoria | Wednesday
RWANDAN-backed Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) rebels have warned that government troops now allied with former rebels backed by Uganda were reinforcing front lines, and pleaded for a resumption of talks on the future of the huge central African country.
“It’s time for us to sit down and sort out our problems,” Adolphe Onusumba, the leader of the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) told reporters in Pretoria after peace talks in South Africa ended abruptly with a sideline power-sharing agreement between the Kinshasa government and the Ugandan-backed Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC), which controls the northern third of the former Zaire.
An RCD representative in the east of the DRC, Jean-Pierre Lola Kisanga, meanwhile warned that Kinshasa government troops and their allies the government soldiers are supported by Angolan and Zimbabwean troops were reinforcing their front lines near Lusambo, in south-central Kasai oriental province, and at Kajiba, in west-central Kasai occidental province.
“These troops have occupied the disengagement zone that separated our forces,” Lola Kisanga said in Kigali.
He said a Zimbabwean gunboat was also heading toward the rebel-controlled city of Kisangani in the northeast.
“It is now on a stretch of the Congo River controlled by the MLC,” he said.
“We are warning the Kinshasa government and the MLC against these military provocations.
“The RCD will react as soon as these troops set foot on one square inch of territory under our control. – AFP