30/08/13 Reuters: Rwanda accuses Congo of shelling as tensions mount

 

The Democratic Republic of
Congo said Rwanda's
accusation was a sign Kigali
wanted to intervene openly in its eastern war. Rwanda
has denied accusations by U.N. experts that it covertly backs Congo's M23
rebels.

The mounting cross-border
tensions came as a newly-deployed U.N. Intervention Brigade, with an
unprecedented mandate to crush rebel groups, entered combat alongside the
Congolese army for the first time. U.N. officials accused the M23 of firing a
shell into Rwanda
on Thursday which killed a civilian.

Congo and Rwanda have
fought two wars over the last two decades in Congo's mineral-rich, lawless east.
Rwanda has come under
intense international pressure to play a constructive role for peace in its
larger neighbor after rebels seized control of Goma, the largest city in
eastern Congo,
in November.

Regional mediators said
they were "gravely concerned" by the escalation in violence and
called for a return to peace talks. M23 rebels said they were ready for a
bilateral ceasefire but this was promptly rejected by Kinshasa.

Rwanda said a woman was killed and a baby
seriously injured by a shell that fell in its territory on Thursday.

"We have the capacity
to determine who fired at us and will not hesitate to defend our territory. Rwanda has a
responsibility to protect its population," Foreign Minister Louise
Mushikiwabo said in a statement.

Mushikiwabo did not say
what action might be taken. She said a total of 34 rounds had been fired into Rwanda in the
last month by Congolese forces: "We have remained restrained for as long
as we can but this provocation can no longer be tolerated."

Kinshasa said the statement was part of a
plan to justify Rwandan intervention in Congo's
eastern Kivu provinces, a decade after Kigali
officially withdrew troops from a previous war.

"All (Rwanda) wants to
do is find a way to create permanent disorder to allow them to enter and loot
the Kivus, as they have done over the last 15 years," Congolese
Information Minister Lambert Mende told Reuters.

Ray Virgilio Torres, the
top civilian official in the U.N. peacekeeping mission in North Kivu province,
said U.N. troops had confirmed that the shell that killed the woman in Rwanda was fired by rebels in the frontline town
of Kibati.

"It is something we
condemn in the strongest terms, they are war crimes and something that for us
remains unacceptable."

A rebel spokesman was not
immediately available for comment.

MILITARY SOLUTION

Goma, the capital of North Kivu, has been at the heart of two decades of
conflict stretching back to the Rwandan genocide. Since then, Kigali
has repeatedly intervened in Congo,
saying it had to hunt down Hutu militia who fled into Congo's lawless
east after taking part in the 1994 mass killings.

The M23 is the latest
incarnation of eastern Congo's
Tutsi-led rebellions exploiting Kinshasa's
weak grip on its borderlands, where there is a complex web of local politics
and regional conflicts over ethnicity, land and minerals.

Reuters reporters in Goma
heard blasts of heavy weapons from the frontline around Kibati, 11 km (7 miles) to the north. A
U.N. military spokesman confirmed U.N. attack helicopters had carried out air
strikes but gave no further details.

A brief rebel seizure of
Goma last November embarrassed the U.N. and prompted the creation of the
3,000-strong brigade with a mandate to neutralize armed groups, including the
M23.

A Tanzanian peacekeeper was
killed in Wednesday's fighting, the first death since the brigade engaged
rebels last week after accusing the insurgents of shelling the lakeside town of
a million people.

A diplomat in the Great
Lakes region said Rwanda
had provided support to rebels to counter the subsequent U.N. aerial and ground
assault. Rwanda
blocked U.N. sanctions against two M23 leaders on Wednesday.

Regional countries, acting
under an umbrella organization called ICGLR, called on Thursday for a
resumption of stalled peace talks. The U.N. Special Envoy to the Great Lakes region Mary Robinson has also said for a
political solution.

Global intelligence firm
Stratfor said the involvement of the U.N. brigade had made a negotiated
solution less likely.

"(Congo's) president will continue to push for a
military solution to the crisis in North Kivu
and appeal for additional support from the U.N. forces in the country,"
Stratfor added.