/ 1 December 2004

100 suspected Rwandan troops spotted in DRC

UN troops in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Wednesday spotted a group of 100 apparently Rwandan soldiers, raising fears that Rwanda was once again invading the vast neighbouring country.

The report by the UN mission in DRC, Monuc, came a day after Rwandan President Paul Kagame defied international pressure by announcing his troops would target Rwandan Hutu extremists in eastern DRC because the UN and the Kinshasa government had failed to disarm them.

On Wednesday, Kigali declined to confirm or deny it had sent troops to DRC.

”This morning I received information that has yet to be confirmed that a team we sent to Rutshuru region, in Virunga park, had come across a group of 100 soldiers suspected to be Rwandans,” the Monuc’s chief in in the eastern town of Goma, M’Hand Djalouzi, told journalists.

”How can they say they are Rwandan soldiers? I will neither confirm nor deny it,” Richard Sizibera, Rwandan presidential envoy for the Great Lakes region, said in Kigali.

Djalouzi’s remarks follow days of unconfirmed reports that Rwanda had already sent troops across the border to eastern DRC to target Rwandan Hutu extremists who fled there after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and who Kigali says still threaten Rwanda’s security.

”Infiltration is nothing new but this is something else, it has the appearance of an invasion,” said Djalouzi. However, he said: ”We do not have proof of the presence of contingents, of battalions [of Rwandan troops] in large numbers in a position to attack and occupy places in DRC.”

On Tuesday, the secretary-general of a former DRC rebel group, Jean Louis Ernest Kyaviro, said two brigades of Rwandan troops had crossed the border ”several days ago” near Rutshuru and Lubero, which lie 70km and 250km north of the border town of Goma respectively.

He said the Rwandans had burned huts and killed about 60 people.

Goma was the headquarters of another rebel group which Rwanda backed militarily and politically during DRC’s devastating 1998-2003 war.

Also on Tuesday, DRC President Joseph Kabila annonced 10 000 extra soldiers would be deployed to the east to maintain security there.

The same day, Rwandan President Paul Kagame reiterated his intention to send troops to eastern DRC to attack the Hutu extremists and suggested such troops might already have have been deployed.

”We have said we would do it, but we won’t tell you when or how,” Sezibera said on Wednesday.

”As long as Monuc and the DRC government fail to resolve the problem of the Interahamwe [Hutu extemists] and ex-FAR [soldiers from a defunct Rwandan army] we reserve the right to do what is necessary to solve this problem alone,” he added.

As well as during the 1998-2003 war, Rwanda also sent troops to DRC in 1996, during an earlier conflict that led to the fall of president Mobutu Sese Seko.

On both occasions Kigali justified the move with the need to neutralise the Hutu extremists opposed to Rwanda’s Tutsi minority.

The United Nations has accused Rwanda, however, of profiting from its presence in DRC by extracting valuable minerals there.

Among the responsibilities of Monuc, which has about 10 000 troops in the DRC, is to disarm the Rwandan Hutus there, who are said to number several thousand.

If Rwanda has actually sent troops across the border, the action goes against several undertakings, most recently a commitment to resolve the region’s problems peacefully made during a summit meeting in Tanzania in November 20. – Sapa-AFP