Rwanda warns of Congo invasion if militias advance

The President of Rwanda Paul Kagame threatened yesterday to re-invade the Congo to confront marauding militia forces heading towards his country's border.

"If we have to carry out intervention to stop them spilling out, we will do it," he said.

It is only a month since Rwanda pulled out its 20,000-strong army from the country in the face of intense international pressure and an agreement that was hailed as ending Africa's great war. But Mr Kagame said Rwanda would notify the United Nations Security Council and then take action unless the international community intervened in a forceful way.

"Congo's problem is that of a failed state, and the international community needs to take action by sending in a UN force," Mr Kagame said, although he expressed little optimism that that would happen.

Africa's Great Lakes region is in turmoil again as militias, including the Interahamwe and the former Rwandan army responsible for the 1994 genocide engage in blood-letting and head towards the border with Rwanda and Burundi.

Hopes for peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are fast receding as a result of fighting by the militias attacking the Rwandan-backed Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD).

Elsewhere in the vast country, extremists are attempting to create ethnically-pure towns and villages. Amnesty International, has called for urgent action by the United Nations to halt what it says are mass killings and rapes in north-eastern Congo.

An estimated one million people have been killed in the past three years and half-a-million forced to flee as the country has been invaded by rival armies of four countries.

Vicious fighting broke out at the weekend between the towns of Bukavu and Uvira, which is home to the so-called Mai-Mai tribal militia. The Mai-Mai told the BBC's Great Lakes Service yesterday that they now have troops on the outskirts of Bukavu and intend to attack. The town was reported to be tense, with shops closed.

So far, the more than 27,000 foreign soldiers, from Rwanda, Zimbabwe, and Angola have left the Congo, in accordance with a peace accord signed in Pretoria in July.

The Rwanda army first invaded an area of the Congo 27 times its own size because the Congolese government was sheltering Interahamwe forces. Rwanda has always argued that unless these forces were killed or disarmed that they would threaten it again.

Rwandan security sources now say that more than 6,000 Interahamwe from two brigades are preparing to attack.

Rwanda's invasion was marked by allegations of atrocities and systematic looting, in particular in Congo's mines. Mr Kagame says that any investigation will show that allegations of human rights abuses by his forces and the theft of natural resources will prove unfounded.

"We have been accused of exploiting the wealth of the Congo, now we can show it is not so,' he said in London where he was meeting Clare Short, the Secretary of state for International development.

The Rwandan leader was also meeting the Ugandan leader Yoweri Mouseveni. Both countries armies were involved in violent clashes in the Congo before the recent withdrawal.