Global Policy Forum

By Rodrique Ngowi

Rwandan-backed Congolese rebels have rejected calls from the U.N. force commander in Congo to leave Kisangani, the country's third-largest city, the rebels' foreign affairs spokesman said Thursday.

Joseph Mudumbi said rebels of the Congolease Rally for Democracy were demanding in return that the United Nations immediately investigate the deployment of Congolese government forces in violation of key provisions of the 1999 cease-fire agreement to end Congo's 34-month civil war.

The rebels refuse to demilitarize Kisangani, the easternmost port on the Congo River, because of encroaching guerrilla warfare staged by Rwandan Hutu militiamen, backed by the Congolese government, who are moving eastward to evade a program to disarm, demobilize and reintegrate combatants under the 1999 Lusaka peace accord, Mudumbi said.

He spoke by telephone from rebel headquarters in the Congolese border town of Goma after the rebel leadership met Wednesday with Maj. Gen. Mountaga Diallo, commander of the U.N. force in Congo, dubbed MONUC.

The war in Congo erupted in August 1998 when Rwanda, Uganda and their Congolese rebel allies took up arms against then-President Laurent Kabila. They accused him of nepotism, warmongering and beefing up his unreliable army with the Rwandan militiamen known as Interahamwe and Ugandan rebel groups. Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia poured thousands of troops and military hardware into Congo in support of Kabila.

The Interahamwe militia were responsible for many of the killings in the 1994 government-orchestrated genocide in Rwanda in which at least half a million minority Tutsis and politically moderate majority Hutus were slaughtered.

Both Rwanda and Uganda pulled out of Kisangani a year ago under U.N. supervision after their troops had clashed three times, leaving the city under the control of the RCD rebels.

On Tuesday, France introduced a resolution at the Security Council that demanded that the Rwandan-backed rebels respect the demilitarization of Kisangani. Diallo repeated the demand Wednesday.

''We rejected calls for demilitarization of Kisangani because it is no longer relevant since Ugandan and Rwandan forces have left the city,'' Mudumbi said after meeting Maj. Gen. Diallo. ''We told him there is also a new threat posed by the Interahamwe who are moving toward areas around Kisangani as they head eastwards to Rwanda.''

Since May, hundreds of the Interahamwe militia have converged in the northeastern mountains bordering the two countries, making incursions into Rwanda where more than 700 have been killed in clashes with the army, Rwandan security officials said.

''There is also a battalion of Interahamwe from Boende and Ikela in Equateur province (under government control) that is now moving along the River Congo towards Kisangani and eastern Congo,'' Mudumbi said. ''They have heavy weapons, support weapons and personal weapons and are capable of endangering security along the river and any other place.''

In a report to the Security Council Monday, Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed ''foreboding'' about the reported movement of armed rebel groups into the eastern part of Congo and their incursion into Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania.

Rwandan Brig. Gen. James Kabarebe said the movement was part of a plan by the Interahamwe, backed by the Congolese government, to move back into Rwanda. He said the principal force was organizaing in Kamina, in government-controlled territory in southeastern Congo, and was being ''armed, equipped and assisted to infiltrate Rwanda.''

Mudumbi said some 9,000 Congolese troops and allied rebels had been moving into South Kivu province in eastern Congo, sometimes reoccupying positions from which they had withdrawn under the cease-fire agreement.

The often-violated cease-fire accord gained momentum following Kabila's Jan. 16 assassination and the succession of his son, Joseph, to the presidency. Since then, most belligerents have pulled their forces back from front lines. U.N. troops have deployed to guard installations and equipment used by unarmed observers verifying and monitoring the cease-fire.

However, Mudumbi warned that ''signs of resumption of war are obvious, and we have told Diallo that if Kabila does not stop these vio