Hutu rebels surrender for repatriation

Eight Rwandan Hutu rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have given themselves up for voluntary repatriation, four days after a joint operation by UN troops and the Congolese army was launched to flush them out, a UN official told IRIN on Friday.

"The current joint operation is the last chance we are giving these armed combatants inside Congo to voluntarily return to their country," Eliane Nabaa, the public information officer for the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC), said.

She added: "Failure to heed to our call would mean that the Congolese army will forcefully disarm them."

Nabaa said Rwandan rebels who were still hiding in jungles in eastern DRC were running out of time, as the UN-Congolese army campaign was their last chance to be repatriated peacefully.

MONUC troops and thousands of Congolese army soldiers began joint patrols on Monday in the eastern province of South Kivu to protect civilians and pressure Rwandan rebels to surrender and return home.

But the rebels, loyal to the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda - a mainly Hutu group of fighters including remnants of those who are largely accused of responsibility for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda - warned on Tuesday that they would never agree to be disarmed by force by anyone.

Nabaa cautioned that a confrontation between the Congolese army and the Rwandan Hutu rebels would worsen the humanitarian crisis in an area already hit by numerous clashes between different rebel Congolese factions over the last six years.

"But there will be no option if they fail to come out peacefully," she said.

In October, Rwandan and Congolese government officials resolved to end hostilities between the two countries with the Kinshasa government pledging to deploy its troops in parts of eastern Congo to stamp out Rwandan rebels.

In addition to the eight who have surrendered, Nabaa said, a "significant" number of other Rwandan rebels had voluntarily given themselves up for repatriation to UN officials in Goma, the capital of Congo's North Kivu Province.

The UN-Congolese joint military patrols are seen as a forerunner to larger operations to restore order in the east, where thousands of Rwandan Hutu rebels have ignored calls for them to disarm and return home.

The presence of thousands of the rebels in eastern Congo during the last 10 years has fuelled regional instability and was used by Kigali as justification to invade Congo in 1996 and in 1998.

An estimated 10,000 Rwandan Hutu rebels remain in eastern Congo, to which they fled to after the 1994 genocide during which some 937,000 people died, according to Rwandan government figures.