Kinshasa and RCD-N trade accusations

The Kinshasa government and the rebel Ugandan-backed Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie-National (RCD-N) have levelled serious accusations of hostage-taking and arms-supplying at each other.

Kinshasa claimed that RCD-N had taken eight civil servants and a commercial aircraft hostage, and the RCD-N alleged that Kinshasa was supplying arms to another Ugandan-backed group, the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie-Kisangani-Mouvement de liberation (RCD-K-ML), which has been fighting the RCD-N.

"Roger Lumbala, the head of RCD-N, has threatened to reignite war, by falsely alleging that his soldiers had seized an aircraft transporting arms to Isiro," a city located some 350 km northeast of Kisangani in northeastern Congo, the DRC communication minister and government spokesman, Kikaya Bin Karubi, told a news conference on Thursday.

He said RCD-N had aken hostage eight civil servants travelling on the aircraft on a mission to evaluate payment of salaries to civil servants in the northeastern region of the DRC.

Lumbala had earlier announced that his forces had seized an aircraft carrying weapons armaments allegedly being sent by Kinshasa to his adversary, the RCD-K-ML. "We seized military equipment aboard an aircraft from Kinshasa heading for Beni," he said on Tuesday.

RCD-N has recently taken control of this region following fighting with RCD-K-ML.

"The aircraft belongs to a commercial airline company, and had been chartered by the priests of St Joseph [religious order]. It contained notebooks, medicine and clothes," Kikaya said.

Questioned on the matter, Kolosso Sumahili, the RCD-K-ML secretary-general, denied Lumbala's accusations. "The priests of St Joseph and the aircraft's crew have repeatedly asserted that it only contained goods belonging to their congregation, and that these items were not meant for our movement, but rather for the local population," he said.

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in the DRC, known as MONUC, said it had been informed of the hostage-taking and confiscation of the aircraft.

"We are not in a position to verify if the plane contained arms or if arms were planted there, because our observers were not at the airport when the plane landed," MONUC spokesman Hamadoun Toure told IRIN.