Rebel threatens to restart Congo war

Congolese rebel leader Laurent Nkunda yesterday threatened to take his eastern guerilla war westwards to the capital Kinshasa unless the government agreed to talks on the country's future.

Defiant in the face of international moves to end the conflict in the east Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mr Nkunda rejected complaints by human rights groups against him, saying he "didn't give a damn" about the International Criminal Court (ICC).

"I've done no wrong to my people... nobody can reproach me for anything," the slim, bespectacled rebel chief said in an interview at his hilltop headquarters in North Kivu province.

Mr Nkunda, who belongs to and defends Congo's Tutsi minority but also demands a better government for the whole country, last week suspended a major advance towards North Kivu's provincial capital Goma that displaced tens of thousands of civilians.

The United Nations and foreign aid groups are now scrambling to address a humanitarian emergency described as "catastrophic" by relief workers in a country where more than five million people have died in a decade from conflict, hunger and disease.

Wearing a green beret and beige camouflage uniform and carrying a cane topped with a silver eagle's head, Mr Nkunda said that if his offer of talks was not accepted by President Joseph Kabila, he would end a ceasefire in North Kivu.

"If they refuse to negotiate, it will mean they will be ready to only fight and we will fight them because we have to fight for our freedom," Mr Nkunda said, surrounded by verdant hills that have earned North Kivu the name "Africa's Switzerland".

The atmosphere there was peaceful, in sharp contrast to the anguish and suffering of refugees packed into camps around Goma, who are clamouring for food and protection from violence.

But 50 kilometres to the northeast at Kiwanja, Nkunda's men fought a gun battle with the Pareco Mai-Mai militia, some of whose fighters backed Kabila during the war but which, like Mr Nkunda, had signed a peace deal for North Kivu in January.

UN peacekeepers at a mobile operations base were caught in the crossfire but none were injured, a UN spokesman said.

Mr Nkunda, a former army general who commands a 4,000-strong guerilla force, said his next offensive would not stop at Goma, where UN peacekeepers have reinforced positions, but aim for Congo's capital Kinshasa, over 1,500 km to the west.

"Goma is just a place to pass through ... When they force us to come down to Goma we won't stop there," he said.

Congo's government has refused to talk with Mr Nkunda since his latest offensive and accuses neighbouring Rwanda, also a former Belgian colony, of backing him - a charge denied by Kigali.

"I'm not from Rwanda and I claim nothing for Rwanda," said Mr Nkunda, who led his rebel Cabinet in a prayer before a meeting.

UN peacekeepers say their 17,000-strong force, the world's largest peace mission, is badly stretched across a country the size of Western Europe, where violent armed groups abound, often profiting from its rich reserves of copper, cobalt and gold.

International efforts are under way to hold a peace summit between Congo and Rwanda and tackle the humanitarian emergency.

Since 2006 elections that returned Mr Kabila to power, hopes rose that the vast central African nation had finally left behind the 1998-2003 war that left the economy in ruins.