09 09 13 Reuters: Congo rebels to return to talks, but not to army

 

Regional presidents on
Thursday called Kinshasa
and the rebels to restart negotiations after the army, backed by U.N. troops,
bolstered the government's position with rare military successes in recent
fighting.

The M23 insurgency is the
latest incarnation of a Tutsi-dominated rebellion that has repeatedly tried to
integrate into the Congolese army, only to withdraw. Its fighters deserted en
masse 18 months ago, accusing the government of reneging on a 2009 peace deal.

 

 M23's leader Bertrand Bisimwa said
on Sunday that the rebels would send a delegation to talks which are due to
reopen in Uganda's capital Kampala on Monday. But he
said they were not interested in pursuing a new reintegration deal.

"We are not demanding
integration into the FARDC or into politics," he told journalists in the
town of Bunagana, a rebel stronghold near Congo's eastern border with Uganda and Rwanda.

Congo's government has already said it
will attend the talks.

Millions of people have
died from violence, disease and hunger in Congo's
gold, diamond and tin-rich eastern borderlands during nearly two decades of
ethnically driven conflict that has its roots in Rwanda's 1994 genocide.

Bisimwa reiterated a long-standing
demand that the government eradicate the Rwandan Hutu FDLR rebels, made up in
part of ex-soldiers and militia who fled to Congo after
slaughtering around 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

M23 has accused the army of
receiving military support from the FDLR, an accusation Kinshasa rejects. The government and U.N.
investigators meanwhile claim Rwanda
is supporting M23, a charge the rebels and Kigali have repeatedly denied.

Bisimwa also called for the
return of thousands of Congolese refugees – most of them Tutsis – now living in
camps in Rwanda.

"We are ready to go to
Kampala and to
be disarmed. And our soldiers are ready to enter the demobilization process if Kinshasa accepts to
fulfill the two conditions," he said.

M23 humiliated Congo's army and the country's 17,000-strong
U.N. peacekeeping mission by briefly occupying the eastern city of Goma in November, forcing
Kabila to accept the Ugandan-brokered peace talks as a condition of the rebels'
withdrawal.

However, with the help of a
new U.N. Intervention Brigade – created in wake of Goma's seizure and given a
tough mandate to neutralize armed groups – the army has pushed M23 fighters
away from the city of one million.

A military standoff has
prevailed since the rebels pulled back to Kibumba, some 30 km (18 miles) north of Goma,
last month. U.N. forces are reluctant to pursue them deep into the dense
forests and rugged hills of North Kivu
province.