Rwanda threatens harsh means against rebels in Congo

Rwanda may resort to violent means against the Rwandan rebels in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) if "these enemies of peace are not disarmed by the third party," a Rwandan officer said in Kigali on December 18.

Capt. Ndore Rulinda, director of information and documentation of the Rwandan Defense Forces, made the remarks while talking about the current security situation in the Great Lakes region, only one day after Rwandan President Paul Kagame hinted that he would send his troops to the DRC to track down the Rwandan rebels Interahamwe there.

"Everything has got its time frame, like our commander-in-chief publicly said the other day, if these enemies of peace are not disarmed by the third party, time will come and we do it ourselves," Rulinda said, adding the rebels "have on many occasions used Congolese territory as their launch pad to carry out a series of attacks inside our national boarders."

The Interahamwe militia are largely drawn from the former Rwandan army and Hutu militiamen blamed for the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which an estimated 800,000 people were slaughtered within 100 days.

Rwanda has long accused the Congolese government and the UN mission in the DRC, or MONUC, of failing to disarm the rebels, and threatened several times to send troops to the DRC.

Kagame and his Congolese counterpart Joseph Kabila signed a peace pact in July 2002, and Rwanda agreed to pull out its 20,000 soldiers in the DRC, and Kinshasa agreed to disarm and repatriate Rwandan Hutu extremists.

Tension in the region remains high over the Rwandan warning, and reports claim Rwandan troops have already made good of the threat, but Rwanda firmly denied the accusation.

Rwanda sent troops into eastern DRC in 1996 and 1998, citing security threat from the exiled Hutu rebels.

Source: Xinhua