December 16, 2000
Rwandan officials on Saturday reacted coolly to the proposed deployment of United Nations peacekeepers along Congo's porous border with Rwanda, saying it fails to address the issue of Congo's support for an exiled Hutu militia responsible for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. "It's a misinterpretation of the problem. Congo is not just a border issue," Rwandan presidential foreign policy adviser Patrick Mazimhaka said. "If we ignore Congo's support for the militia, the issue of governance in Congo, then it will not work."
The Security Council on Thursday voted to send an additional 500 unarmed military observers to beef up the 224 already in place to monitor a fragile cease-fire in Congo's 18-month civil war in which Rwanda is backing rebels fighting to oust President Laurent Kabila. The council also agreed to consider Secretary-General Kofi Annan's recommendation that U. N. infantry units be deployed, conditions permitting, near the eastern border towns of Goma and Bukavu where they would prevent the Hutu Interahamwe militiamen from entering Rwanda.
Mazimhaka said the deployment merely deploying U.N. troops along the border was not addressing the issue of disarmament of the Hutu militia, which fled into what was then Zaire after taking part in the 1994 genocide in which at least half a million minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were killed. Kabila has since enlisted their support to fight the rebels and their Rwandan military allies.
Mazimhaka said more than 6,000 former Rwandan soldiers and militiamen had fled into Zambia following the recent rebel capture of the southern town of Pweto. "If Kabila is building a 6,000-strong army to attack Rwanda, what message is he sending?" Mazimhaka said.
The U.N. refugee agency has confirmed that the fighters, alongside the Congolese army troops and their Zimbabwean allies, fled into Zambia to escape the fighting. More than 50,000 Congolese refugees fled alongside soldiers, the agency said.
Kabila is backed by the armies from Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia. Despite a year-old peace accord, fighting has persisted, and all the warring sides have promised to pull back 15 kilometers (9 miles) from current front lines to allow the deployment of a planned force of 5,537-strong peacekeepers.
The main rebel Congolese Rally for Democracy, backed by Rwanda, said on Friday it would not honor the agreement unless Kabila opens political talks on a transitional government as stipulated by the peace accord.
