Congo (MRB Oct 01 2001): 'Negative forces' threaten peace.

The capture early last month of the DR Congo town of Fizi in Southern Kivu by Burundian and Rwandan Hutu fighters supported by Mai-Mai militia threatens to jeopardise the entire Congolese peace process.

This capture, admitted by the Rwandan-backed Congolese Rally for Democracy (CRD-Goma), and subsequent unsuccessful attempts by the coalition to conquer the city of Kindu in the Maniema region, has revived the tensions between the rebels and the Kinshasa government. Now the CRD-Goma is accusing the Congolese government of stabbing it in the back by arming these groups, and therefore violating the cease-fire.

The deterioration of the security situation in Eastern Congo is a bitter reminder of the unsolved questions of the disarmament and demobilisation of the forces branded as "negative" in the Lusaka peace agreement - the Ugandan, Rwandan, Burundian and Angolan rebels.

The disarmament of some 3,000 Hutu Rwandan fighters at Kamina military base on September 11 has not solved the problem. The UN Observers Mission in the Congo (MONUC) counted only 1,600 fighters, while statements made in Brussels by the spokesman of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (DFLR), the group which claimed control over these fighters, cast serious doubt on the implementation of the Lusaka agenda.

The spokesman, Alexis Nshiyimana, a former broadcaster on Radio Rwanda under the late President Habyarimana, claims that the DFLR is "not concerned at all" at the Lusaka agreement of July 1999, since it is not mentioned in it; it was only created later, in May 2000.

Nshiyimana says that the soldiers only laid their weapons down to show good will. The DFLR want the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, to accept their conditions for continued disarmament - that he should start an inter-Rwandan dialogue with the domestic and external opposition. He should also commit himself to "respect human rights, pull out his troops from the DRC and put an end to death-squad operations which target political exiles".

"We are waiting. We are sure Kagame will give up. We have still many fighters outside of the Congolese government's control", warned the DFLR spokesman, who ironically confirmed the Kigali government's claim that the total number of Rwandan rebels in the DRC is much higher than the 3,000 admitted by the Kinshasa authorities.