200810302232 | Rwanda rejects DRC summit

Rwanda rejects DRC summit

Kigali - Rwanda said on Wednesday that the fighting in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo was an internal affair for which it bore no responsibility and rejected the idea of a summit on the issue. Kinshasa has accused the Rwandans of backing the forces of the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) led by rebel DRC General Laurent Nkunda, a charge Kigali has denied. Rwanda said the DRC on Tuesday sent a delegation led by Foreign Minister Alexis Tambe Mwamba to discuss the conflict in the east of the country and to suggest a meeting between DRC President Joseph Kabila and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame.

The purpose of the summit would be to discuss the situation in North Kivu, where Nkunda's forces are heading for the provincial capital Goma, causing tens of thousands of people to flee, Joseph Mutaboba, Kagame's special envoy for the Great Lakes region, told state radio.

The president had told them that "the moment is not yet indicated for such a meeting," Mutaboba said, adding that Rwanda first wanted the agreement signed by the two countries to stabilise the region to be put into effect.

Kagame said the fighting between DRC government forces and those loyal to Nkunda, a Tutsi like much of the Rwandan leadership, "is a problem which concerns the Congolese," according to Mutaboba.

Kagame repeated his own demands, which concern another rebel force in the region, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FLDR), in part composed of Hutus who fled Rwanda after taking part in the 1994 genocide of Tutsis.

Rwanda sees the 6 000-strong FLDR as a threat and has long fruitlessly demanded it be disarmed in line with agreements signed by the countries of the Great Lakes region.

Kinshasa has refused to use force to disarm the FDLR, on October 20 urging its members to go home, or face a "hardening" of its actions.

Nkunda sees the FDLR as a threat to the safety of the Tutsi community in the DRC, which he claims to be defending, and accuses government forces of complicity with it.

Kinshasa's inability to impose order in the east of the country has enabled armed groups to kill, rape and loot with impunity, often with the help of the security services of neighbouring states.

- SAPA