Renegades pull out of Bukavu

2004-06-04 13:16

Kinshasa - Renegade army commanders who seized an eastern border city were pulling out their troops on Friday, while rioters in Congo's capital burned tires and stoned police cars in a second day of violent protests against the government and UN forces for letting Bukavu fall.

A UN commander in Bukavu, a strategic trading centre on the border with Rwanda, confirmed the pullout had begun overnight. The commander, Brigadier General Jan Isberg, pledged to use force to "disarm and arrest" any armed renegade fighter found in the city by Saturday.

Wednesday's capture of Bukavu by two renegade commanders posed the most serious challenge yet to the transition government brought to being by peace deals that ended a devastating 1998-2002 war in DRc.

Anti-government and anti-UN riots that erupted in the capital the day after Bukavu's fall revealed problems for President Joseph Kabila's government even on its home turf, in the west.

Mobs blamed Congo's army for giving up the city and Congo's 10 800-strong UN force for standing by as it was seized by two renegade commanders, who claimed the local government military commander was persecuting their Congolese Tutsi minority there.

UN troops in Kinshasa shot and killed at least two protesters who stormed a UN base in a day of massive protests on Thursday over Bukavu's fall.

Violent demonstrations resumed on Friday, although initially on a smaller scale.

Milling crowds heaped piles of tires, scraps of wood and tree branches to block streets of the city centre. Demonstrators burned tires and hurled stones at passing police cars.

Congolese security forces armed with assault rifles were out in force, patrolling in armoured vehicles with mounted guns. Congolese police flanked the few white expatriates who ventured out into the streets, protecting them from attack as suspected UN workers. UN officials said some UN workers had been kidnapped, then released, on Thursday.

Unreasonable expectations

UN Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno blamed the violence on unreasonable expectations among Congolese about the UN peacekeepers' ability to control militants.

"There's an expectation that Monuc with its limited resources could do everything," Guehenno said in New York. "I think it's likely we will need more troops."

In Bukavu, renegade forces started pulling out of the city late on Thursday under a deal that will leave UN troops, rather than government forces, in charge of security there, Isberg said.

The UN mission in Congo "has verified that the withdrawal has began," Isberg, a Swedish army officer, told reporters.

UN peacekeepers stepped up patrols in Bukavu, which had been caught in days of fighting by feuding factions there ahead of Wednesday's takeover.

Protests in the capital are the largest since at least 1997, when longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko fell, launching Congo into the 1998-2002 war.

- AP