Congo rebel leader wants direct talks with government

Goma: With a cease-fire appearing to halt most fighting, a rebel leader said on Thursday he wanted direct talks with the Congo government.

Ambassadors from the US and UN were sent in to help set up negotiations.

Sporadic gunfire could still be heard Thursday night in Goma, the provincial capital of eastern Congo, but the city was calm for much of the day.

That was in sharp contrast to Wednesday, when tens of thousands of residents, refugees and government soldiers fled in a chaotic torrent ahead of advancing rebels.

Drunk soldiers pillaged and raped in Goma, killing at least nine people in their homes, according to UN Radio Okapi.

"We want peace for people in the region," rebel leader Laurent Nkunda said by telephone after halting his advance on Goma and calling a unilateral cease-fire.

Nkunda also wanted to discuss his objections to a $9 billion-dollar deal that gives China access to vast mineral riches in exchange for a railway and highway.

He also wants the urgent disarmament of a Rwandan Hutu militia that he says works with the government and preys on his minority Tutsi people.

"It's not acceptable for government soldiers to be fighting alongside genociders," Nkunda said. "We want peace for people in the region."

Nkunda launched a low-level rebellion three years ago claiming Congo's transition to democracy had excluded the Tutsi.

He alleges the Congolese government has not protected ethnic Tutsis from the Rwandan Hutu militia that escaped to Congo after helping slaughter half a million Rwandan Tutsis in 1994's genocide.

Congo has charged Nkunda himself with involvement in war crimes. Rights groups have also criticized government forces for atrocities and widespread looting.

Nkunda's rebellion has threatened to reignite the back-to-back wars that roiled Congo from 1996 to 2002, drawing in eight African nations.

The United Nations sent Guatemalan special forces to reinforce its peacekeepers in Goma, where it also added police units and a third helicopter gunship, UN spokesman Kevin Kennedy said in New York.

He said 850 Indian troops patrolled the city overnight.

The UN has only 6,000 of its 17,000-strong Congo peacekeepers in the east because of unrest in other provinces.

It says the force is badly overstretched, but European nations were sharply divided Thursday over whether to send troops to Congo.

The peacekeepers are the only organized force on the ground though attempts were being made to regroup government soldiers who scattered in disarray, Kennedy said.

Nkunda, who commands about 10,000 rebels, said he wants to take Goma, a city of 600,000 near the border with Rwanda. But so far he has heeded UN demands to stay out of the city.