Congo Talks Peace, Stays Ready for War

With its president at a peace summit, Congo was on a war footing Saturday--broadcasting accusations against neighboring Rwanda, enlisting fresh army recruits and detaining ethnic Tutsis on suspicion of treason.

Hundreds of unemployed men and women turned out at a Kinshasa military base to enlist in the army, vowing to crush the rebellion in eastern Congo and take the war to Rwanda.

“We’re determined to protect our country,” said one young woman who refused to give her name. “If they give us arms today, we are ready to go all the way to Rwanda.”

President Laurent Kabila accuses the Tutsi-led Rwandan government of masterminding the uprising in the Kivu region. Several key cities, including Goma and Bukavu, are already in the hands of rebel Tutsis.

Rwanda repeatedly has denied it is behind Congo’s uprising and said Kabila was trying to divert attention from disenchantment with his government.

Kabila sat down Saturday in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, with his Rwandan adversary, President Pasteur Bizimungu, to try to find a peaceful end to growing hostilities.

The summit called for a truce and set up a four-member investigating committee comprising Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia and Tanzania. The committee will investigate, among other things, Kabila’s allegation of an invasion by Rwanda.

On his return to the Rwandan capital of Kigali, Bizimungu accused Kabila of trying to establish a pretext to attack Rwanda and threatened Congo with a preemptive strike.

The Congo government repeatedly has been broadcasting statements by Kabila declaring there is no room to bargain with Rwanda.

The rebellious Rwandan soldiers and Congolese Tutsi fighters--known as Banyamulenge--backed Kabila in his May 1997 ouster of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, but they have since grown disaffected. Among other things, the fighters accuse Kabila of failing to contain Rwandan Hutu rebels launching cross-border attacks from inside Congo.

The Banyamulenge have close ethnic ties with the Tutsis, who now govern Rwanda.

The rebel Tutsi fighters also appeared to ignore diplomatic efforts to end the conflict and vowed to push toward the capital of Kinshasa.

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The rebels announced a new set of targets in western Congo, pledging to push inland from their Atlantic coastline stronghold of Moanda to Boma, 150 miles southwest of the capital.

Several European countries and the United States have ordered their nonessential embassy employees out of Congo. The United States has urged all Americans to leave the country.

With the hostilities mounting, ethnic Tutsis in Kinshasa are facing reprisal attacks for the rebellion.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Tutsis and other citizens have been rounded up by the police, while troops loyal to Kabila looted their shops, the U.N. human rights agency said.

Meanwhile in Rwanda, attacks by Hutu rebels and counterattacks by the government army have killed more than 55 people in northwestern Rwanda, the Rwanda News Agency reported Saturday.

Rebels armed with guns, clubs and machetes killed 11 people and wounded seven others in an attack Saturday near the border town of Gisenyi, 60 miles northwest of Kigali, the private news agency quoted army sources as saying.