Congo's M23 Rebels Set Conditions for Disbanding
KINSHASA, Congo September 8, 2013 (AP)
By SALEH MWANAMILONGO Associated Press
Description: Associated Press
The leader of eastern Congo's M23 rebel movement said Sunday the group will
disband only if another rebel group that is composed of ethnic Rwandan Hutu
fighters is disarmed and Congolese refugees return home from neighboring
countries.
"We are ready to disarm but for these two conditions," Bertrand Bisimwa, the
M23 president, told The Associated Press by phone.
He said the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR, should
be disarmed before M23 can be disbanded. In the past Rwanda has justified
military intervention in Congo to protect itself from the FDLR, some of
whose core members took part in the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
Bisimwa's comments came on the eve of renewed peace talks with Congo's
government in the Ugandan capital, Kampala. The talks have repeatedly
stalled since they started last December, and Congolese President Joseph
Kabila said on Saturday that government troops were prepared to resume their
offensive against the rebels if the talks failed.
The M23 rebel group, which briefly captured the eastern city of Goma last
November, is made up of hundreds of Congolese soldiers mostly from the Tutsi
ethnic group who deserted the national army last year after accusing the
government of failing to honor the terms of a deal signed in March 2009. The
rebels are widely believed to be backed by the government of Rwanda, a
charge Rwanda denies despite evidence presented by United Nations experts
and Human Rights Watch.
In the recent fighting, however, Congolese troops were boosted by a special
intervention brigade of U.N. troops who, unlike the other 17,000
peacekeepers stationed in the vast Central African nation, have a mandate to
attack the rebels.
Bisimwa said that if M23 disbanded its fighters would have no interest in
being integrated into the Congolese army.
"Nobody is interested in anything else," he said. "M23 will not be a
political party. Each one will take care of his cabbages and carrots,
because we are herders, farmers and merchants."
Lambert Mende, the Congolese government spokesman, said Sunday that Kabila's
administration had no problem with the conditions set by M23, noting that
the government has long been working for the return of refugees and
considers the FDLR to be "a negative force just like M23."
Both conditions, however, would be difficult to meet, especially given the
government's inability to stabilize Congo's volatile east.
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