Global Policy Forum

By Gabriel Gabiro

President Paul Kagame said Monday the government of neighboring Congo is no longer supporting Rwandan rebels who fled to Congo's lawless east after the 1994 genocide that killed more than a half-million people in Rwanda. Monday's statement will ease years of tension. Rwanda sent thousands of troops into Congo twice, in 1996 and 1998, to try to crush the insurgents.

The Rwandan rebels based in eastern Congo include members of Rwanda's former army and extremist Hutu militias, known as the Interahamwe, who led the 100-day genocide of more than a half-million people in Rwanda. Other rebels include the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda, known by its French acronym FDLR, whose members include people accused of participating in the genocide that targeted members of the Tutsi ethnic minority and political moderates from the Hutu majority.

The genocide ended when Tutsi-led rebels, under Kagame, ousted the extremist government that had orchestrated the slaughter.

"Our relations with Congo have improved a lot," Kagame said in comments that came as Congo struggles to restore a semblance of order in its eastern provinces ahead of elections set for the end of July - the country's first since its independence from brutal Belgian colonial rule in 1960. "We believe that the government of Congo at the moment is not supporting the FDLR or the Interahamwe in any way," Kagame told journalists in Rwanda's capital, Kigali. "Let it be clear that we don't consider Congo as supporters of militias anymore." "The problems in Congo today are more on the capacity to handle the situation, than from their active support for any militias or rebels," he said, referring to Congo's failure to disarm dozens of local armed groups and those from neighboring Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda that operate in the lawless eastern Congo.

Congolese troops and United Nations peacekeepers last month launched a fresh military offensive, targeting Rwandan Hutu rebels blamed for attacking civilians at home and in Congo.

Kagame, meanwhile, said he was considering a plea for clemency from Rwanda's former President Pasteur Bizimungu, who was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison on charges of treason, threatening national security and embezzlement. "Your Excellency, I am requesting you to consider me for release under the prerogative of mercy that your office has," Bizimungu, who became Rwanda's first president after the genocide, said in a letter sent to Kagame on April 15.

Bizimungu, who was arrested in April 2002, lost his final appeal at the Supreme Court on Feb. 17. Bizimungu, a Hutu, became president when rebels ended the genocide and set up a government of national unity. Observers said, however, that Kagame had real powers as the vice president, defense minister and senior army commander. Bizimungu resigned in March 2000 after disputes with Kagame's Rwanda Patriotic Front party over the prosecution of ministers accused of corruption and mismanagement.

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