16 09 13 AFP: DR Congo army accuses Rwanda of 'kidnapping' soldier

The
sergeant "was returning from a visit to his family when three
Rwandan police pounced on him as he was walking in the neutral zone
and dragged him to the Rwandan side," a spokesman said.

"It's
a kidnapping… He was in the neutral zone, not in Rwanda," said
Olivier Hamuli, spokesman for the Congolese army in the North-Kivu
province, of which Goma is the capital.

The
alleged incident, on which the Rwandan authorities did not
immediately comment, comes amid continuing tension between Kigali and
Kinshasa over a rebellion in and around Goma.

Kinshasa
and the United Nations accuse Rwanda of being actively involved in
the rebellion by the M23,
a group of former rebels who were integrated in the army in 2009 but
mutinied again last year.

Rwanda
in turn has accused the Congolese army of firing rockets and mortar
shells on its territory and has massed troops at the border, sparking
fears of a further regionalisation of the conflict.

"It
was the population that alerted the authorities" to Sunday's
kidnapping, the army spokesman said. "Tensions are running high
among residents, who see this as a provocation, and we are trying to
calm things down."

A
witness told AFP that several hundred angry residents briefly massed
at two border crossings in Goma following the incident, forcing them
to close for several hours.

Hamuli
explained that the neutral zone was a street of five to seven metres
in width (around 20 feet) separating Goma from Gisenyi, its twin city
on the Rwandan side of the border.

He
said the Joint Verification Mechanism, a multinational team of
military officers set up by the Great Lakes regional body last year
in a bid to defuse the M23
crisis, would look into the incident.