'Disarm Rwandan rebels in DRC'
2004-11-25 21:37
Pretoria - It is time for the United Nations (UN) to forcibly disarm fugitive Rwandan rebels inside the Democratic Republic of Congo, South African deputy foreign minister Aziz Pahad said on Thursday.
"It is a South African view that we must get the UN to move to the second stage of forced disarming of the negative forces that are in the DRC," Pahad told reporters in Pretoria.
To this end, the UN mission in the DRC (Monuc) must be given the mandate to help those who wished to go home to do so, to resettle the rest, and to forcibly disarm them all.
"This has been our own position, that you'll never get voluntary disarmament.
"And unless you deal with the Interahamwe and Exfar and close those camps on the border of Rwanda this will always be an unstable situation."
Pahad said he hoped Rwanda would not carry out its threat to infiltrate the DRC to disarm the rebel forces, but leave matters to the UN.
Such unilateral action would only escalate the crisis and lead to more serious problems.
War 'already on'
Earlier in the day, Rwanda's President Paul Kagame threatened steps against the rebels, adding: "The war is already on".
"At the appropriate moment, we certainly will take measures," he told the Associated Press in an interview.
Rwanda has claimed that the fugitive forces are using bases in the DRC to destabilise their country of origin.
"The Rwandan threat comes after their allegation that over the last few days what they've been warning about has been happening - that (the forces) have now started penetrating Rwanda and destabilising it," Pahad said on Thursday.
"They have always warned that if nothing is done about those forces they will not hesitate to go back into the DRC.
"But we... caution them against that because we feel that there is the UN forces and the UN has increased its numbers in that region now."
Pahad stressed the importance of successful demobilisation, disarmament, re-integration, repatriation and resettlement of armed forces in solving the problems of the Great Lakes region as a whole.
- SAPA