South Africa is fully prepared to take military action against Rwandan Hutu rebels in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad said on Tuesday.

The deputy minister said that South Africa fully supported the European Union's decision to take military action if rebels persisted in disrupting the peace processes in the DRC and Burundi- - a move also supported by the United Nations and African Union.

"We are part of the Peace and Security Council (of the African Union). The Security Council has said that if the political process has failed there is no option but to take military action, " Pahad said.

Many members of the DRC-based Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda including several of its senior commanders, are accused of involvement in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which the United Nations estimates 800,000 people were killed -- mainly minority Tutsis.

These hardline Hutu leaders fled to eastern DRC after the genocide, fearing reprisals, and started to regroup and rearm in the refugee camps, forcibly recruiting children from their camps into their movement.

"So if and when the decision is taken -- and the UN has to assess this themselves -- to move in to forcibly remove and disarm the rebel Ex-far and Interahamwe militias (now jointly called the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda), then at that stage South Africa will decide what our own contribution will be. But we are fully in support of the principle that if these forces are refusing to implement their own decisions and continue to try to sabotage the progress we have made on the political side then we have to take action," Pahad said.

Last Friday the European's Special Representative to the Great Lakes region, Aldo Ajello, said the EU may support military action against Rwandan Hutu rebels hiding in the eastern DRC if they refused to disarm and return home.

"Since the political option is not working for the time being, because we don't have the feeling that the FDLR are trying to implement what they said in their declaration (to disarm), then we are moving into the military option," Ajello said in a statement.

Source: Xinhua