DRC News Update: Nkunda Rebel Dissident Committed 'Treason', Says Spokesman

Congolese women mourning the loss of two civilians who were killed in Goma. The Congolese army units broke down in the city creating chaos that is being exploited by the rebels.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos

Nkunda rebel dissident committed 'treason': spokesman

Wednesday, January 7

GOMA, DR Congo (AFP) - - Laurent Nkunda is still in charge of DR Congo's rebel movement and a rival who challenged his authority will be charged with "high treason", a spokesman said Tuesday as splits emerged in the movement.

Chief of staff General Bosco Ntaganda said in a statement released on Monday that Nkunda had been dismissed as leader of the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) for "poor leadership" and "bad governance".

But another top officer, Seraphin Mirindi, told AFP that Nkunda was still head of the rebel movement, which would meet Tuesday to discuss Ntaganda's fate.

Later however, he said that meeting had been put off until Wednesday.

"The movement is not at the service of one individual," Mirindi said earlier Tuesday. "It remains as it was and it is functioning normally," said Lieutenant-Colonel Seraphin Mirindi.

Nkunda himself was to attend the disciplinary meeting in the Rutshuru area of Nord-Kivu in the east of the country, around 60 kilometres (40 miles) north of the provincial capital Goma.

To underline Nkunda's authority, Mirindi said a rebel delegation had already left for the Kenyan capital Nairobi for another round of UN-brokered peace negotiations to begin Wednesday.

Those talks were suspended in December when UN mediator Olusegun Obasanjo said the rebel delegation lacked the authority to make concessions.

Meanwhile, Ntaganda himself had called his own meeting of senior officers close to him in the Mushaki area, in the rebel fiefdom of Masisi, a member of his entourage said.

The general "is currently in consultation with the military chiefs of the CNDP," the source said, adding that the meeting "will allow us to see how the chiefs of staff are going to run the CNDP while awaiting new instructions".

The report that Nkunda had been replaced had been denied within hours late Monday by Nkunda's number two, Colonel Makinga Sultani.

"There's no change in the CNDP. Laurent Nkunda is still chairman. There has not been any leadership change in the movement, the power in CNDP still rests with Nkunda," Sultani told AFP.

Nkunda, a former general in the regular army, has headed the ethnic Tutsi rebel movement in DR Congo since it was set up in 2006.

His rebels have been camped a few kilometres north of Goma since seizing control of a large swathe of eastern Nord Kivu province from government forces in a major offensive in October, which left more than 250,000 people homeless and sparked fears of a wider conflict.

Ntaganda was embroiled in a similar controversy in October, when a statement announcing Nkunda's death was purportedly signed by the general. Despite this, Ntaganda kept his job as Nkunda's chief of staff.

The CNDP's chief of military staff is normally resident in Kabati, in the mountainous Masisi region northwest of Goma, where for some time he has spearheaded opposition to Nkunda's dominance of the movement. Nkunda has been based mainly in the Rutshuru area in recent months.

Ntaganda is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), which issued a warrant for his arrest for recruiting child soldiers for the rebel movement in the province of Ituri, northeastern DR Congo, between 2002 and 2003.

More recently, during the rebel offensive in October, Ntaganda commanded rebel forces responsible for the massacre of more than 150 people in the Nord Kivu town of Kiwanja, an action which has reportedly deepened a rift with Nkunda.

Meanwhile, the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI, appealed to armed groups in eastern DR Congo to release children who have been "wrenched from their families" to act as soldiers.

The pope said in a message to coincide with the Feast of the Epiphany that he wanted to draw attention to "the dozens of children and adolescents who have been abducted in recent months" in eastern Congo.

On Tuesday, British International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander arrived in DR Congo to help encourage a peace deal between the CNDP and the government of President Joseph Kabila.