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06/15/2004:

"Rwanda denies massing troops on DR Congo border"

yahoo news

KINSHASA (AFP) - Rwanda denied accusations by Kinshasa that it is massing troops on the border with the vast Democratic Republic of Congo (news - web sites) (DRC), as a sabre-rattling dissident DRC general, allegedly backed by Kigali, threatened to go back to war.

In the statement issued here late Monday, the DRC army accused renegade General Laurent Nkunda of "being a spokesman for the Rwandan army, which this evening (Monday) massed troops on our common border to perpetrate yet another attack on our country."

But Rwanda rejected the claims, and said it had not stepped up its military presence in the border region since in April, after a cross-border attack by Rwandan Hutu rebels based in the eastern DRC.

UN Finds No Mistreatment of Tutsis AP story

We had reinforced our security in April by redeploying troops near the border, but not more," the Rwandan Defence Forces' (FDR) spokesman, Colonel Patrick Karegeya, told AFP.

Asked whether Kigali planned to send more soldiers to the area if fighting in the DRC's eastern Sud-Kivu province continued, Karegeya said: "Not unless (DR) Congo threatens to attack us."

The only extra security measures taken by Kigali since the renewed unrest in the eastern DRC was to close the border on June 5, he said.

Dissident soldiers led by Nkunda on June 2 overran Sud-Kivu's provincial capital, Bukavu, which lies just across the border from Rwanda.

Nkunda said he had invaded the town to put a stop to alleged massacres by the DRC army of Congolese ethnic Tutsis who have historic ties to Rwanda.

But a week after taking the town, he withdrew his claims of an ethnic slaughter and pulled his men out of Bukavu, only to threaten on Sunday to declare war on Kinshasa if the government did not investigate the "massacres".

In its statement, the DRC army also denied its soldiers had taken part in the alleged massacre of Banyamulenge -- ethnic Tutsis from DRC -- in Bukavu, calling the accusations "lies and excuses" for Nkunda to plunge the country into another war.

The DRC is struggling to emerge from a war that began as an uprising in the east in 1998 with Rwandan backing and which grew into what has been called Africa's world war, drawing in half a dozen other African states at its height.

The war ended last year with a peace pact that took years to hammer out.

Under the accord, former rebel groups, including the eastern-based Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) to which Nkunda belonged, entered a unity government, while their fighters joined a unified army.

Despite the end of the war, however, violence has continued to rock the east of the vast country, which is the size of western Europe minus Scandinavia and has more than 200 ethnic groups.

"The armed forces chiefs of staff wish to inform that the Banyamulenge have never been the target of tribal hatred," said the DRC army statement, signed by Admiral Liwanga Mata-Nyamunyobo, the most senior officer in the armed forces.

"No action aimed at exterminating them was ever planned," it said, adding that the UN mission in DRC, known as MONUC, and non-governmental organisations that operate in the country "neither observed nor confirmed any atrocities or killings."

It also called on people in eastern DRC to be "vigilant and collaborate (with the authorities) by denouncing any suspicious acts or individuals."

The DRC's two latest wars began in the east.

In 1996, what was then Zaire plunged into war when Rwanda sent troops into the eastern DRC to support rebels who ousted the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.

In August 1998, Banyamulenge soldiers launched an uprising in the eastern towns of Goma and Bukavu aimed at toppling the regime of Mobutu's successor, Laurent Kabila, accusing him of nepotism, corruption and bad government.

Kigali again sent soldiers into its western neighbour to back the rebels and neutralise the threat posed by the Rwandan Hutu extremists who fled to the eastern DRC after carrying out Rwanda's 1994 genocide.