Rwanda is massing troops on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the DRC army has charged in a statement, as a dissident army general in the east, allegedly backed by Kigali, was poised to make good on a threat to start a new war.
In the statement late on Monday, the army accused renegade General Laurent Nkunda of ”being a spokesman for the Rwandan army, which this evening [Monday] massed troops on our common border to perpetrate yet another attack on our country.”
Nkunda has threatened to wage a new war against Kinshasa if alleged ethnic massacres in the eastern town of Bukavu are not investigated, although last Wednesday he retracted the massacre claims, saying he had been ”mistaken”.
The statement also denied that the army had taken part in the massacre of Banyamulenge — ethnic Tutsis from DRC — in the eastern town of Bukavu, calling the accusations ”lies and excuses” for Nkunda to plunge the country into another war.
The DRC is struggling to emerge from a war that began as an uprising in the east in 1998 with Rwandan backing and which grew into what has been called Africa’s World War, drawing in half a dozen other African states at its height.
The war ended last year with a peace pact that took years to hammer out.
Under the accord, former rebel groups, including the eastern-based Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) to which Nkunda belonged, entered a unity government, while their fighters joined a unified army.
Despite the end of the war, however, violence has continued to rock the east of the vast country, which has more than 200 ethnic groups.
On June 2, Nkunda and another rebellious officer, also from the ex-rebel RCD, overran the Sud-Kivu capital Bukavu for one week before the DRC army recaptured it.
Nkunda said he had seized the town to put a stop to ethnic massacres there, but after his men’s withdrawal, they were accused of committing indiscriminate killings and sexual violence against civilians.
Nkunda vowed on Sunday to wage yet another war against Kinshasa unless a commission was set up immediately to investigate the alleged massacres of Banyamulenge in Bukavu.
The statement by the DRC army denied that it had committed any atrocities against the Banyamulenge.
”The armed forces chiefs of staff wish to inform that the Banyamulenge have never been the target of tribal hatred,” said the statement, signed by Admiral Liwanga Mata-Nyamunyobo, the most senior officer in the armed forces.
”No action aimed at exterminating them was ever planned,” it said, adding that the UN mission in DRC, known as MONUC, and non-governmental organisations that operate in the country ”neither observed nor confirmed any atrocities or killings.”
It also called on people in the eastern DRC to be ”vigilant and collaborate (with the authorities) by denouncing any suspicious acts or individuals.”
The weeklong occupation of Bukavu and Nkunda’s threats to declare another war in DRC sparked fear in the east, where the country’s two latest wars have begun.
In 1996, what was then Zaire plunged into war when Rwanda sent troops into the eastern DRC to support rebels who ousted the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.
In August 1998, Banyamulenge soldiers launched an uprising in the eastern towns of Goma and Bukavu aimed at toppling the regime of Mobutu’s successor, Laurent Kabila, accusing him of nepotism, corruption and bad government.
Kigali again sent soldiers into its western neighbour to back the rebels and neutralise the threat posed by the Rwandan Hutu extremists who fled to the eastern DRC after carrying out Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. — Sapa-AFP