Kigali threatens to attack Hutu rebels in Congo

Rwanda has informed the UN that it might send its army across the border to attack Hutu rebels it says have become a direct threat its national security.

"William Swing, the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative in the DRC, was in Bukavu and received a call from a Rwandan official informing him that a Rwandan army attack against the FDLR [Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda] was imminent," Patricia Tome, the director of information for the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, known as MONUC, told IRIN on Wednesday.

She said Swing immediately began consulting regional diplomats in an effort to calm down the situation.

In the Rwandan capital, Kigali, the minister for regional cooperation, Protais Mitali, told IRIN on Thursday that Rwandan Hutu rebels were advancing in large numbers on the border, with a view to launching attacks into Rwanda.

"We cannot watch as the extremist forces advance onto our territory," Mitali said. "We are preparing to return our forces to the DRC."

Rwanda previously invaded eastern DRC in 1996 and 1998.

The Congolese government has not yet reacted officially to the new threat of a Rwandan invasion but the Congolese vice minister for information and the media, Simon Tshitenge, said Rwanda was looking for a pretext to return.

"We will not accept accusations of allowing the FDLR to advance towards Rwanda. All measures have been taken to respond to any eventuality," he said.

Tshitenge also denied Rwanda's other accusation against the Congo "with the incident in Gatumba, in Burundi recently, where there was a massacre of 160 Banyamulenge Congolese".

He said: "Rwanda and Burundi had accused Congo of having allowed the killers passage, but till now, no proof of this has been produced."

Mitali, the Rwandan minister, said the rebels fired six rockets into Rwanda on 16 November, wounding three civilians in Cyanzarwe District in northwestern Rwanda. He said the incident occurred just before the international conference on the Great Lakes region's peace and security took place in the Tanzanian commercial capital, Dar es Salaam, on 19-20 November.

"We want force to be applied by both the DRC government and the UN Mission in the DRC to disarm these forces - failure means we shall take the responsibility ourselves," he said.

Mitali said preparations on the side of the rebels had been going on in the Congo's North and South Kivu provinces.

Rwanda has been calling for a stronger UN Security Council resolution that would enable the UN troops in Congo to use force to disarm the Rwandan Hutu rebels and repatriate them.

In early November, MONUC troops joined thousands of Congolese soldiers on joint patrols in South Kivu to protect civilians and put pressure on the Rwandan rebels to lay down their arms and return home. However, the rebels warned they would resist any attempt to disarm them by force.

Rwanda's latest threat of intervention came a day after the Council delegation, visiting the Congolese town of Bukavu on Tuesday, appealed to the FDLR to give up their weapons and accept voluntary repatriation.

The threat also came just after a week of sensitisation training that MONUC and the Congolese army had undertaken in Walungu, in South Kivu, to disarm and repatriate the FDLR.

Congolese military authorities have threatened to use force against the FDLR if they fail to comply. Already, 8,000 Rwandan rebels have returned home under MONUC's voluntary "Disarmament, Demobilisation, Repatriation, Reinsertion and Resettlement" programme, in operation since 2002.

However, MONUC has acknowledged that some FDLR hardliners have been preventing other colleagues from enrolling in the repatriation programme.

In total, close to 11,000 foreign fighters - not just Rwandan - have been repatriated under this programme. MONUC says 8,000 to 10,000 Rwandan fighters still remain in Congo.