DRC rebels pull back
2008-11-19 17:41
Goma - Congolese rebel fighters pulled back from two key battlefronts as aid workers warned on Wednesday of a massive spike in malnutrition among the displaced and the EU called for UN troops to be boosted.
A day after renegade general Laurent Nkunda's camp said they would stage a partial pull-out as a show of goodwill to a United Nations peace envoy, a spokesperson for a UN peacekeeping force confirmed the rebels were on the move.
"The rebels are currently in the process of withdrawing from their positions," said Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Paul Dietrich, the spokesperson for the UN mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo, known as MONUC.
"It is a process that is still ongoing," said Dietrich.
The withdrawals were centred around two battlefronts about 80km northeast of the main eastern city of Goma, which have been the scene of some of the heaviest clashes of recent weeks.
But the rebels stayed put about 15km from the city of about 500 000.
Army 'preparing to occupy'
Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), which said it was withdrawing from the zones for UN peacekeepers to step in to the breach, accused the army of preparing to move into the evacuated zones.
"The withdrawal began yesterday and we have now withdrawn by 40km," Nkunda's spokesperson Bertrand Bisimwa confirmed on Wednesday.
Bisimwa said "elements" from the army, Mai-Mai militia and Rwandan Hutu rebels "were preparing to set foot in the areas we evacuated" and were already "positioned at Vitshumbi", earlier held by Nkunda's fighters.
The group said any army "occupation" of these zones would "immediately nullify the decision to withdraw."
Dietrich meanwhile added that representatives of MONUC, Nkunda's force and the government troops were planning to meet "to discuss practical issues related to the withdrawal and the demilitarisation of the area."
In a weekend meeting with UN special envoy and former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, Nkunda said he wanted to negotiate a ceasefire with the government.
The situation on the ground has become increasingly complicated. Clashes broke out on Monday in the town of Kirumba between government forces and a usually pro-government militia known as the Mai-Mai in which at least two people were killed.
France has put forward a proposal at the United Nations Security Council to beef up the numbers of MONUC as the best way to stabilise the situation, a theme taken up by the European Union on Wednesday.
"Let's be clear and lucid, this crisis cannot be resolved without boosting the means for peace stabilisation, particularly those of the United Nations," French European Affairs Minister Jean-Pierre Jouyet told the European deputies.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon has asked for the MONUC mission to be strengthened and this is being discussed at the UN Security Council, said Jouyet, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency.
The violence in the country, which was devastated by a five-year civil war at the turn of the decade, has caused yet more suffering for the local population.
Malnutrition soars
It has forced thousands of people to flee to neighbouring countries with the UN's refugee agency reporting that 2 000 refugees had crossed the border into Uganda on Tuesday alone.
That brought the total number of arrivals since August to more than 14 500.
The US-based World Vision charity said its staff operating a clinic in the rebel-held town of Rwanguba town were now treating up to 10 malnourished children each day, from an average of one or two before the conflict.
Nkunda says he is defending local Tutsis against the Interahamwe, a Rwandan Hutu militia, some of whom have been implicated in the 1994 genocide of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in neighbouring Rwanda.
He has threatened to topple DRCongo President Laurent Kabila's government unless he is granted face-to-face negotiations with the president.