Global Policy Forum

By Barbara Crossette

The president of Rwanda, a central player in the long war in Congo, is warning American and United Nations officials that they must seize the opportunity to search for a peace settlement with a new Congolese leader while the political situation there remains fluid.

President Paul Kagame, who has known the new Congolese president, Joseph Kabila, for years, said in an interview last week that Mr. Kabila, thrust into power after his father, Laurent Kabila, was killed on Jan. 16, appeared to be more open to peace and more cooperative with the outside world. "The opportunity is available and is not going to be there forever," Mr. Kagame said.

He described the younger Kabila as a man able to live in the present and look toward the future. The elder Kabila, whom Mr. Kagame eventually turned against after supporting his drive for power, he described as an old revolutionary suspicious of everyone, locked in the past and paralyzed by his own fears.

Mr. Kagame urged timely international action in Congo after a year of fruitless debate in the United Nations Security Council, which has been unwilling or unable to send even a small peacekeeping force because of the continued warfare and the elder Kabila's refusal to allow political dialogue.

The Congo conflict is Africa's widest war and involves the armies of five outside nations: Rwanda, Uganda, Angola, Zimbabwe and to some extent Namibia.

"I think one can give him the benefit of the doubt that maybe he can do better than his father," Mr. Kagame said of Joseph Kabila, who met with the Security Council on Friday. "From what I've learned, he might be interested in going forward with peace. What I've not understood fully yet is what formula he wants to use to achieve that. Whether it is a formula that satisfies all the parties concerned is something we have yet to understand."

Mr. Kagame, who met with Mr. Kabila in Washington on Thursday, said he intended to tell Secretary General Kofi Annan when they hold talks at the United Nations this week that Rwanda's concerns will have to be factored into any Congo settlement.

He accused some countries, notably France, of trying to obscure what he called the "core issue" in Congo: the presence of thousands of soldiers from the former Hutu-led Rwanda army (known by its initials in French, F.A.R.) and the Interahamwe militias that carried out genocidal attacks on Rwandan Tutsi and moderate Hutu in 1994.

Hundreds of thousands of Rwandans died before the attackers fled into Congo ahead of a Tutsi-led guerrilla force commanded by Mr. Kagame, who took power in Rwanda later that year.

Mr. Kagame, who received some of his military training at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, ordered soldiers to pursue the Hutu into Congo, where Rwandan troops have been ever since.

Members of the Security Council have grown increasingly concerned that the outside powers in Congo, including Rwanda, are taking advantage of the chaos there to exploit its vast mining and mineral resources, which have in turn been used to fuel still more fighting.

Mr. Kagame described a Security Council investigation into that issue as a red herring meant to put Rwanda on the defensive. Rwandan troops and the rebels they support operate in diamond-mining areas.

"I don't think the exploitation of resources of Congo is a core issue," he said. "If people are really concerned about exploitation of resources, they should have started long ago to raise this issue. Exploitation of Congo has been done by other people for decades."

Instead, Mr. Kagame said, the widening warfare in Congo has grown out of the failure of the outside world to do something about the violent militias still inside the country.

"They are being helped by the Congolese government, and from that one can conclude they are also getting support from the allies of Kabila," Mr. Kagame said. "Information we heard was that Zimbabwe was actually training them in the Congo."

"On one hand, the international community is there claiming to be looking for a solution to the problem," he said. "On the other hand, it is allowing this problem to be recycled," he added, meaning that the militias are being allowed to fight, regroup and cross borders as governments in the region help them or look the other way.

"All these issues I intend to raise with the secretary general," he said. "The Interahamwe could have been rounded up, but nobody bothered at all." Mr. Kagame suggested a solution that he said had helped nearby Angola in its long civil war against rebels of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, or Unita. The group has been put under an embargo by the Security Council.

"The whole world stood up against Unita in support of the Angolan government and threatened sanctions against anyone who would work with Unita, be it individuals, groups or countries," he said. But when it comes to the Interahamwe, he said, "there is always ambiguity — condemnation but no action."

"One very simple proposal," Mr. Kagame said, "would be international commitment to condemning the ex-Interahamwe and actually threatening to punish whoever works with them — the Congolese government, any other government, individuals. You will see how quickly people want to dissociate themselves from this whole problem."

As an example of a failure in this regard, he pointed to Zambia, whose president, Frederick Chiluba, has taken a lead in peace efforts, but recently failed to intervene after about 6,000 troops in southeastern Congo, among them a significant number of ex-Rwandan army and Interahamwe militiamen, fled into Zambia.

"We were surprised to see that the Zambian government and leadership, which is really involved in facilitating the peace process, did not act to disarm these groups while they were in Zambia," Mr. Kagame said. "They waited until the whole problem was recycled in the end by taking these troops back to Congo to wage war again."

Given the turmoil in Congo, Mr. Kagame said, he was not surprised to hear of the killing of Laurent Kabila. "There was the sort of confusion in the Congo that anything could happen," he said. "I'm told that Kabila had some weeks before executed a number of soldiers from eastern Congo. So this could be linked with why one of his guards who comes from eastern Congo killed Kabila, but I don't have facts beyond that."

Mr. Kagame, who was widely regarded as a favorite of the Clinton administration, said he hoped the Bush administration would continue American support. He said he was pleased with his meeting last week with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. "There seems to be a good understanding and a readiness to be useful," he said. "That was the sense I got."