6,000 Interahamwe to be handed over

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is ready to hand over to Rwanda 6,000 Hutu Interahamwe militia and ex-FAR (pro-Hutu ex-Rwandan Armed Forces), the Rwanda News Agency reported on Tuesday quoting the DRC foreign minister. "Our government shall no longer accept rebel groups from neighbouring countries to fight their home government from the Congolese territory," Leonard She Okitundu, the Congolese minister for foreign affairs, told the agency. For the last six years the Interahamwe and ex-FAR have been fighting alongside Congolese troops and against local forces, backed by Rwanda and Uganda, trying to topple the government in Kinshasa. Okitundu, who said his government was determined to mend fences with Rwanda and Uganda, added that the Interahamwe militiamen would be handed over to either the UN Observer Mission in DRC (MONUC) or the Rwandan government, under the terms of the 1999 Lusaka Peace Accord. The Congolese government, he said, could only surrender those militiamen within government's reach and not the 40,000 men the Rwandan government estimates are inside the DRC. "Rwanda should remember that a fraction of the territory is not under government control," he said.