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Cracks surface in Congo rebel ranks ahead of talks
A split emerged on Tuesday in Congo's eastern Tutsi rebellion after the movement's top military commander openly challenged its founder, General Laurent Nkunda, in an apparent power struggle.
- Reuters
- Published: 23:58 January 6, 2009
Goma: A split emerged on Tuesday in Congo's eastern Tutsi rebellion after the movement's top military commander openly challenged its founder, General Laurent Nkunda, in an apparent power struggle.
Senior military and political representatives of the rebel National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) rejected an announcement by its military chief of staff, General Bosco Ntaganda, that he had deposed Nkunda as the group's leader.
Signs of a split emerged as the Tutsi rebel movement, whose attacks in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo in recent months have displaced a quarter of a million civilians, was preparing to resume peace talks this week with Congo's government.
In a statement to the BBC late on Monday, a spokesman for Ntaganda, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, said the CNDP's military commanders had decided to oust Nkunda because of his "bad governance".
This was quickly denied by other CNDP spokesmen. "General Bosco Ntaganda does not have the authority to depose the chairman Laurent Nkunda. The CNDP remains one movement and one army," asserted Col. Sultani Makenga, the group's military second-in-command.
Attempts to contact Ntaganda, known as "the Terminator" and popular among the rebel rank and file, were unsuccessful.
Unilateral ceasefire
After launching a renewed offensive in late August, Nkunda's battle-hardened rebels routed President Joseph Kabila's army and captured large swathes of Congo's eastern North Kivu province before declaring a unilateral ceasefire in late October. The fighting triggered a fresh humanitarian emergency in the border province, where conflict between rival rebels, militias and the government army has raged on despite a formal end to a wider 1998-2003 war in the former Belgian colony.
United Nations officials and human rights campaigners said the CNDP leadership may have planned to discipline Ntaganda over the massacre of around 150 civilians in the North Kivu town of Kiwanja, shortly after it was seized by the rebels in November.
Up to now, the CNDP has denied its fighters slaughtered civilians, blaming rival pro-government Mai-Mai militiamen.
Officials from Congo's 17,000-strong United Nations peacekeeping force said they were monitoring the situation closely.
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