Congo agrees to deal with warlord
KINSHASA, Congo --A warlord in eastern Congo has agreed to stop fighting government forces in exchange for a government promise not to pursue war crimes charges against him, the army said Wednesday.
Under the deal, renegade warlord Laurent Nkunda would also go into exile and his troops would be integrated into the national army, a process that has already begun, said Col. Delphin Kahindi, a top army commander responsible for east Congo's lawless North Kivu province.
Nkunda, who commands thousands of troops, has been accused of war crimes for years. Once a senior officer, Nkunda quit the army and gained notoriety in 2004 after his forces briefly seized the lakeside city of Bukavu.
New York-based Human Rights Watch has urged the government and U.N. peacekeepers deployed in the mineral-rich nation to arrest Nkunda, but the government has taken little action.
Kahindi said the deal had been made two weeks ago during a meeting with Nkunda that was mediated by officials from neighboring Rwanda. Wednesday marked the first time the agreement was implemented, with two battalions of soldiers loyal to Nkunda beginning to rejoin the army in two locations.
Nkunda commanded rebels backed by neighboring Rwanda during Congo's 1998-2002 war, which drew in the armies of half a dozen African nations. He quit Congo's army and launched a low-level rebellion after the war ended, charging that the country's transition to democracy had excluded the country's minority Tutsi community.
Human Rights Watch says it has documented summary executions, torture, and rape committed by soldiers under Nkunda's command in Bukavu in 2004, as well as in the northern city of Kisangani in 2002.
The central government led by President Joseph Kabila, based in the faraway capital, Kinshasa, has struggled to regain control over the eastern reaches of the country, which had been lawless for years, carved up into fiefdoms by rival rebel groups.
About 17,000 U.N. troops are deployed to bolster security in the Europe-sized country, which held democratic elections last year for the first time in four decades.
Nkunda is still in Congo and will stay for the near future to help facilitate the integration of his men into the army, Kahindi said.
Government troops and Nkunda's forces last clashed in late December just outside the eastern town of Goma, near the Rwandan border. The fighting killed 19 people, the U.N. said.
