Rebels Tighten Their Grip in Eastern Congo

[XXPANTHAXX]

Tutsi-led rebels tighten their grip on newly seized areas of eastern
Congo

By MICHELLE FAUL
The Associated Press
TONGO, Congo

Tutsi-led rebels tightened their hold on newly seized swaths of eastern
Congo Saturday, forcing tens of thousands of frightened, rain-soaked
civilians out of makeshift refugee camps and stopping some from fleeing
to government-held territory.

Aid organizations said they were increasingly worried about a lack of
food and shelter.

European officials offered sympathy but no concrete promise of military
reinforcements for the Congolese troops and U.N. peacekeepers routed by
rebel forces in the sudden and dramatic escalation of eastern Congo's
civil war in the past week.

The rebels appeared to be maintaining a unilateral cease-fire they
declared a day earlier, focusing on consolidating territories that
stretch to the doorstep of the provincial capital, Goma, instead of
taking the city.

The rebels, who said people were leaving the refugee camps of their own
free will, asserted that they stopped short of Goma in hopes of stopping
the chaos that had engulfed it as government troops fled along with tens
of thousands of refugees. However, Goma was also the site of rebel
leader Laurent Nkundas greatest defeat when U.N. attack helicopters
fired on his fighters advancing on the city in December, killing
hundreds of them. It was not clear if that experience influenced his
decision.

The area that Nkunda has seized is a minerally and agriculturally rich
area that commands much of the access to the Rwandan and Ugandan
borders.

Britain's minister for Africa said the U.K. could send troops if
Nkunda's cease-fire fails but the first reinforcements should be
soldiers deployed elsewhere in the country with the U.N. force known by
its French acronym, MONUC.

British Foreign Minister David Miliband, who rushed to the region with
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner after the outbreak of fighting,
downplayed the possibility of an EU peacekeeping force.

"Nothing is being ruled out, and that remains the point," he told
reporters in the Rwandan capital after leaving a refugee camp outside
Goma. "But we have a 17,000-strong MONUC force, and that is of course
the first call for security support in the Congo."

Kouchner said his government was committed to humanitarian assistance,
but not necessarily sending in troops.

"I repeat, 17,000 soldiers are already deployed," he said.

In Rutshuru, a large town 45 miles (75 kilometers) north of Goma, two
groups of refugees hefted bundles of belongings as they plodded home.
Some said they were forced by the rebels to leave camps for displaced
persons.

"They beat us with sticks and told us that we must get out," said Daria
Nyarangaruye, a silver-haired woman with a rosary around her neck and a
spent bullet in her hand.

Nyarangaruye said she had been forced on Saturday to leave a camp near
peacekeepers in Tongo, a hilltop town in the shade of volcanic Mount
Nyirangano. She spoke near her home by a roadside six miles (10
kilometers) from Rutshuru.

Associated Press journalists also saw rebels blocking civilians who
wanted to cross front lines to return to government-held areas.

Most refugees wouldn't give details or their names for fear of
retaliation.

A rebel leader who introduced himself as Maj. Muhire said refugees were
leaving voluntarily. He said they were being "held hostage" at camps by
government troops before the rebels arrived and rebels had told them
they were free to go because the area was "liberated."

Rebels inaugurated a new local administration in Rutshuru and held a
celebratory rally but only about 500 people showed up at the stadium
venue, most of them unenthusiastic.

The French aid group Doctors Without Borders said it was "extremely
concerned about the tens of thousands of people currently on the move,
fleeing the fighting." It said they were in "urgent need of clean water,
basic items like blankets and shelter materials, and food."

Dozens of people already have died of cholera or severe diarrhea for
lack of clean water.

Nkunda told the AP by telephone on Saturday that he has opened a
humanitarian corridor to allow refugees to come home and for aid to get
through.

But there was no sign of any food getting through Saturday, with aid
workers saying some contractors are refusing to move food because of the
insecurity.

Aid workers who tried to distribute food six miles (10 kilometers) north
of Goma on Friday stopped because there was a near-riot among refugees,
some of whom said they had not eaten for three days.

Kouchner and Miliband met with Congo President Joseph Kabila Saturday
before flying to Goma, where they immediately went to visit refugees.

They arrived at the camp at sunset as people were wandering around with
their bundles of belongings in search of a dry spot to spend yet another
night in the open.

Kouchner said he and Miliband want "to understand why, despite so many
efforts, no peace has come, why there have to be hundreds of thousands
of people forced into a horrific situation. Why? Why?"

Nkunda's rebellion has threatened to re-ignite the back-to-back wars
that afflicted Congo from 1996 to 2002, drawing in a half dozen African
nations.

The conflict is fueled by festering ethnic hatred from Rwanda's 1994
genocide and Congo's unrelenting civil wars. Nkunda claims Congo's
government has not protected Tutsis from the Rwandan Hutu militia that
escaped to Congo after helping slaughter a half-million Rwandan Tutsis.

All sides are believed to fund the conflict by illegally mining Congo's
vast mineral riches, giving them no financial interest in stopping the
fighting.

The newly appointed minister of mines, Martin Kabwelulu Labilo, asked
about this exploitation on independent Raga TV, said the stripping of
the country's mineral wealth was "a geological and economic catastrophe"
that caused him "huge shame."