DRC general 'may disrupt polls'

2006-07-10 08:48

Kinshasa - A human rights group in the Democratic Republic of Congo called on Sunday for the arrest of a dissident general in the country's east, fearing he could disrupt historic elections slated for July 30.

Voice of the Voiceless (VSV) said that rogue general Laurent Nkunda possessed arms and sophisticated communications equipment recently smuggled "across the border with Rwanda".

A Congolese Tutsi aligned with Rwanda during a rebellion against the regime of Laurent Kabila in the late 1990s, Nkunda was the object of an international arrest warrant for "war crimes" committed by his forces during their brief occupation of the city of Bukavu in June 2004.

Nkunda 'supported attacks'

The rights organisation said that authorities in Kinshasa had failed to execute his arrest, and Nkunda had since lived and operated with impunity in the Masisi mountains in the North Kivu region of eastern DRC with his men "circulating freely".

An officer of the United Nations mission for the RDC (Monuc), who estimated that Nkunda commanded a well-equipped force of 2 000 soldiers, also asserted that the dissident general received "a shipment of arms, probably from Uganda".

But the same officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, added that "there is no sign of a large increase in his military capacity nor of an imminent attack".

Other UN and diplomatic sources in Kinshasa said that Nkunda might have encouraged, and perhaps logistically supported, recent attacks by rebels in the region against regular army forces.

VSV said that brigades of regular army forces should be provided "arms and all the logistics necessary" to counter any attack by Nkunda ahead of July 30 polls, the first democratic elections in the DRC since 1961.

- AFP