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Thu Dec 23, 6:27 PM ET |
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GOMA, DR Congo (AFP) - Mutinous soldiers who clashed this month with regular troops in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (news - web sites) (DRC) have silenced their guns pending a response from Kinshasa to their demand for government forces to withdraw, they said.
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"We're waiting. We'll see whether they pull out their troops," a mutinous officer told AFP in the regional capital Goma, requesting anonymity.
The mutineers made the demand to visiting Senate Speaker Marini Bodo, but did not specify how far they wanted the government troops to pull back.
Bodo, who arrived in Goma last Friday, returned to Kinshasa on Wednesday.
The regular forces were sent to the east in early December following reports that Rwandan forces were operating near the town of Kanyabayonga. Fighting broke out on December 12, claiming dozens of lives, but the area within a 25-kilometer (12-mile) radius of the town has been calm since Monday.
The demand was on the agenda of a cabinet meeting held late Thursday in Kinshasa, several sources here said.
A delegation led by the local governor, Eugene Serufuli, met with the mutineers in Kirumba, 25 kilometers north of Kanyabayonga, and obtained a commitment that they would remain in place until a solution is found.
Since the fighting abated, the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) has deployed 380 troops to act as a buffer between the two sides, a UN spokeswoman said Thursday.
The DRC army has supposedly been unified since the start of a political and military transition under 2003 peace accords ending a devastating war. However the various components of the fighting force are drawn from former warring parties, and regional animosities persist.
In the east, soldiers are largely drawn from a former rebel movement that enjoyed Rwandan backing, the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RDC), during two successive wars.
While backing the rebels, Rwanda has stated that the main aim of its incursions into the DRC was to deal with their own cross-border foes. All Rwandan troops pulled out under a series of peace pacts signed to end the 1998-2003 conflict in the vast country.
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