Text:
http://www.nando.net/newsroom/ntn/world/120798/world1_16931.html
Rwanda vows to leave troops in
Congo until security concerns are
addressed
Copyright © 1998 Nando Media
Copyright © 1998 The Associated Press
Africa News Online.
KIGALI, Rwanda (December 7, 1998 5:27 p.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) -- Rwanda plans to maintain troops in neighboring Congo until its border is secure, according to its vice president.
Paul Kagame, who is also minister of defense, said Sunday that Rwandan troops intervened in the four-month-old insurgency in Congo on the side of the rebels because Congo's President Laurent Kabila had recruited thousands of former Rwandan Hutu soldiers and militiamen who had fled Rwanda in fear of reprisals for the 1994 genocide.
Rwandan Hutu rebels use bases in eastern Congo to launch cross-border attacks aimed at destabilizing Rwanda's Tutsi-led government.
Kagame said Rwanda would support a U.N.-brokered peace agreement in Congo that addresses the concerns of Congolese rebels fighting to overthrow Kabila and his country's security.
"If we were given cast-iron guarantees by the international community that our security concerns would be addressed, and Kabila demonstrated a genuine commitment to address our security concerns, then we would have no further need to keep our troops in Congo," Kagame told the British Broadcasting Corp.
So far, peace initiatives to end Congo's war have failed over Kabila's refusal to negotiate directly with the Congolese rebel coalition of ethnic Tutsis, disaffected Congolese soldiers and opposition politicians.
Kabila demands that Rwanda and Uganda, who openly support the rebels, withdraw from the conflict.
The war, which began Aug. 2, has drawn in Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia and Chad in support of Kabila.
In a summit in Paris last month, Rwanda agreed with Uganda, Zimbabwe and Congo to sign a cease-fire in Lusaka, Zambia, on Dec. 14-15, but later said any agreement would have to include the rebels.
"The international community must understand that this is an issue that affects our very existence as a nation and as a people," he said.
More than 500,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were slaughtered in Rwanda in the Hutu government-sponsored genocide before Tutsi-led rebels won power in July 1994, sending the defeated Hutu soldiers into what was then Zaire.
In 1996, Rwanda supported Kabila's rebels who ousted longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko but failed to rid the common border of Hutu fighters.
"Kabila and his allies will never be able to overrun eastern Congo, that is impossible," Kagame said. "They also cannot wish away the problems they have created. They need to sit down and talk to those fighting them."
By HRVOJE HRANJSKI, Associated Press Writer