Rwandan military in Goma for joint verification

Four Rwandan military officers have been in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since November as part of a new joint verification committee that also includes Congolese and UN officials, Rwanda's envoy to the Great Lakes region, Richard Sezibera, told IRIN on Wednesday. He denied accusations from various sources, including the Congolese government, that Rwandan troops were fighting in the DRC. "The allegations that we have invaded are all inaccurate," Sezibera said, "though the allegations are being investigated by the joint verification team." "The current fighting in the DRC is all inter-Congolese," he said. In recent days, officials in the DRC said that renewed violence in North Kivu was between soldiers from the armies of the DRC and Rwanda. "Two of six soldiers captured by the DRC army have been identified as Rwandan and have identified themselves as such," Jean-Willy Mutombo, communication advisor in the DRC army, told IRIN on Tuesday from the Congolese capital, Kinshasa. Sezibera responded by saying, "people making uncorroborated allegations are being unhelpful." He said the DRC and Rwanda were collaborating to ensure that their common borders were respected. "A UN-mediated Terms of Reference was signed on 23 September and the verification team became operational at the end of November", he added. Sezibera said the verification team was based in Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu and consisted of four Rwandan military officers and four Congolese officers as well as military officers from the African Union and the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC, known as MONUC. Still, when asked about the announcement in November by Kagame that Rwandan troops would invade eastern DRC to disarm Rwandan rebels there, Sezibera said, "it will happen if nothing is done about them". The threat had soured relations between the government of the DRC and Rwanda, with Kinshasa accusing Kigali of violating its territory. The Hutu fighters in eastern DRC include members of the Interahamwe, the Hutu militia responsible for much of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and the former armed forces of Rwanda. They are based mainly in the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu. The Congolese government says that it is doing something about these rebels. It recently announced that 10,000 additional troops would be sent to the Kivus with a mandate of protecting borders as well as to disarm the Rwandan fighters in DRC territory. Lt Kasanda Wa Kasanda, spokesman of Congo's 10th Military Region in the province of South Kivu, told IRIN on Tuesday that its soldiers had driven a group of Rwandan Hutu fighters from the village of Sibira, in Walungu territory. Kasanda said the Congolese troops had the Hutu fighters surrounded for more than three weeks, and the two forces clashed over the weekend. "We beat them back and dislodged them from Sibira after they attacked us on Sunday," he said. A commander of one of the Rwandan rebel groups known as the Forces democratiques pour la Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR) was arrested with arms and ammunition, Kasanda said. "Other Interahamwe, FDLR and other Rwandan combatants withdrew into the bush towards the village of Luwindja." Kasanda said no one died in the clash. MONUC spokesperson in South Kivu's provincial capital Bukavu, Sylvie Van Den Wildenberg, said MONUC did not take part in the fighting. The Congolese army and MONUC have started a joint operation aimed at disarming the Rwandan rebels and returning them to Rwanda voluntarily. The army said it would begin forcibly disarming the Rwandan fighters if they did not disarm voluntarily but Van Den Wildenberg said MONUC's mandate does not include forcibly disarming foreign fighters.