Rwanda Denies Invading Congo, but U.N. Sees Massing of Troops

By Robyn Dixon and Maggie Farley

Dec. 3, 2004 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writers

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Rwanda denied Thursday that it had sent troops into neighboring Congo, despite repeated threats from Rwandan President Paul Kagame to attack ethnic Hutu militias that have harassed his nation from the area.

United Nations officials, however, said there was mounting though inconclusive evidence that Rwandan troops had crossed the border.

Kagame’s recent threats to send troops into eastern Congo raised fears of renewed conflict in a region where a similar invasion by Rwandan forces in 1998 helped trigger a five-year war involving six countries. The Hutu militias had fled Rwanda in 1994 after carrying out a genocide that killed more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Kagame signed an agreement last month in Tanzania with 14 other regional leaders committing himself to peace and pledging to avoid any action or statement likely to inflame the delicate situation in eastern Congo.

In New York, the U.N. Security Council met in emergency session Thursday after the Congolese government asked that sanctions be imposed on Rwanda to prevent the fragile peace from unraveling.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on the Rwandan government to refrain from military intervention and urged Congo to increase efforts to disarm and repatriate the militias.

The Congolese government, which claims that 6,000 Rwandan troops have crossed the border, has sent a large force of its own to the region in response. There are reports of thousands of civilians fleeing the area.

U.N. peacekeepers had spotted hundreds of “well-equipped troops” in new uniforms moving near the border, United Nations spokesman Fred Eckhard said Thursday. Their communications equipment suggested that they were from the Rwandan army rather than from local factions, he said.

On Wednesday, peacekeepers spotted 100 soldiers suspected to be Rwandans, though their identity has not been confirmed. In a region where ethnic groups and languages span borders and some militiamen wear uniforms similar to those of the Rwandan military, identifying the band of fighters is difficult.

An envoy from the U.N.’s office of humanitarian affairs reported from Congo’s North Kivu province that people there had seen fierce fighting and the looting and burning of villages.

An estimated 8,000 to 10,000 Hutu militiamen, also known as Interahamwe, are based in eastern Congo. Kagame has been highly critical of U.N. efforts to encourage voluntary disarmament among the fighters.

Many analysts believe that Kagame is so critical of U.N. efforts that he is unlikely to yield to pressure from the world body. On Nov. 21, he met with visiting Security Council diplomats trying to encourage peace in Central Africa and dismissed their demands that he resolve disputes through negotiation.

“He was completely uncompromising with the Security Council face to face,” said a diplomat who attended the session. “I don’t know that a Security Council statement from afar will have any effect.”

Fears of renewed conflict grew after rebels briefly seized control of the eastern Congo town of Bukavu in June. The Congolese government believes that Rwanda wants to get control of rich resources of diamonds, gold, cobalt, copper and timber in the east and it claims that the rebels were backed by Rwanda.

However, Kagame sent a letter to the African Union last week announcing that Rwandan military action in eastern Congo would target only Hutu Interahamwe, not Congolese troops.

Susan Linnee, the International Crisis Group director for Central Africa and the Horn of Africa who is based in Nairobi, Kenya, said the situation was serious because Rwanda had signed a commitment not to jeopardize the transition to peace in the region.

Linnee said robust condemnation by the U.S. and Britain and a threat to withhold international assistance might be the only measures that would restrain Kagame because Rwanda appeared to be paying little attention to U.N. statements.

“It’s not a good situation,” she said. “War could break out again because there are so many different groups of people with guns, and this could set off small things and then bigger things and then confrontations. And the ones to suffer would be the civilian population, as has always happened.

“That’s the greatest risk,” she added, “that this would just get out of hand and they’d just roll over the civilian population.”

Dixon reported from Johannesburg and Farley from the United Nations.