Global Policy Forum

Rwanda will send troops back to Congo if the Ugandan army doesn't withdraw from the central African nation and if the Congolese government fails to return its forces to positions established in a 1999 cease-fire agreement, the foreign minister said.

The Ugandan and Congolese governments - working with former Rwandan soldiers and Interahamwe Hutu militia who fled to Congo after carrying out the 1994 genocide in Rwanda - are deploying troops near areas in eastern Congo that are held by Congolese rebels backed by Rwanda, Foreign Minister Charles Muligande said Friday.

``This poses an immediate and direct threat to Rwanda's security,'' Muligande told reporters after briefing diplomats on the situation in eastern Congo. Ugandan government officials and army officers are working with the Rwandan rebels based in Congo to destabilize Rwanda, said Lt. Col. Emmanuel Ndahiro, national security adviser to President Paul Kagame.

Uganda has beefed up its force in Congo to 5,000 men, backed by heavy artillery, armored personnel carriers and tanks, just days after forcing a small Congolese rebel group from several key northeastern Congolese towns, Ndahiro said. On Thursday, the commander of Ugandan troops in the northeastern Congolese town of Bunia acknowledged that he had more than 2,000 troops in the area. He claimed that an unspecified ``neighboring country,'' widely assumed to be Rwanda, was backing Ugandan dissidents poised to attack Uganda from northeastern Congo.

The same day, Ugandan deputy defense minister Ruth Nankabirwa said troops would remain in the Bunia area as long Uganda's security was under threat. At the same time, the Congolese government is in violation of terms of the 1999 cease-fire by deploying troops in territories controlled by another Ugandan-backed rebel group that has forged an alliance with Congolese President Joseph Kabila, Muligande said.

In the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, Patricia Tome, a spokeswoman for the U.N. mission monitoring the 1999 cease-fire in Congo, said observers in eastern Congo had not observed movements of either Congolese or Ugandan government forces or the Interahamwe toward positions held by Rwandan-backed rebels. ``We haven't seen them, but that doesn't mean they are not there,'' she said.

Ugandan Defense Minister Amama Mbabazi dismissed Rwanda's accusations, saying his country's forces were ``nowhere near'' positions held by Rwandan-backed Congolese rebels. ``We feel really offended for anyone to suggest that we are dealing with the Interahamwe,'' he said. ``We are dismissing these accusations with maximum contempt.''

It was not immediately possible to obtain comment from Congolese officials. Rwandan and Ugandan troops clashed three times between 1999-2000 in eastern Congo where they were sent to back Congolese rebels seeking to oust then-President Laurent Kabila.