Accuses Rwanda of betrayal and using General John BoscoNtaganda to take minerals out of DR Congo on behalf of President Paul Kagame
GEORGE KAGAME
In an exclusive interview with The New Times yesterday, General Laurent Nkunda;theChairman of the National Congress for the Defense of the People said he was concerned with the recent developments concerning relations between Rwanda and Congo.
The CNDP is the largest and strongest rebel group in Eastern DR Congo and Nkunda was responding to questions regarding the restoration of diplomatic relations between DR Congo and Rwanda after foreign ministers from the two countries signed started a series of high level talks at Kigali’s Serena Hotel.
Rwanda and DR Congo have been at loggerheads since the end of the Rwandan Genocide in 1994, they have fought a series of wars as well as supporting a myriad proxy wars against each other.
On Friday after DR Congolese foreign affairs minister Tambwe and his host Rosemary Museminari announced to the press that they were set to open embassies respectively in Kinshasa and Kigali.
Nkunda was speaking from Jomba is eastern DR Congo after meeting with the former president of Nigeria General OlusegunObasanjo who is currently working as the UN Special Secretary General Special Envoy in Eastern Congo. Olusegun is mandated by UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to help negotiate a peaceful end to the military conflict in Eastern DR Congo where more than five million people have been displaced and millions more killed according to human rights organizations.
Reacting to reports of massacres in Kiwanja a small town east of Goma the regional capital in which more than 150 people were killed in the weekend of his meeting with Obasanjo, Nkunda said that some elements within the CNDP wanted to capture Goma before the negotiations started.
“Some of our officers wanted to capture Goma such that the CNDP would have a bigger bargaining position with Joseph Kabila’s government. But I refused that strategy; it is not my strategy I think it was suggested by elements within the Rwandan army. We cannot accept Rwandan officers dictating command in Congo. I’m a General and I do not take orders from anybody,” said General Nkunda.
The negotiations between Nkunda’s CNDP with the DR Congo government are to be held in Nairobi Kenya and start on early next month. Both parties are due to send delegations for peace talks to a Nairobi hotel where Obasanjo as well as former Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa will be mediators. Speaking about the peace talks, Nkunda said that he never wanted MONUC to be part of the peace talks as they were not necessarily independent observers; “we have fought against the MONOC, they shoot at us. How can you have your enemy also acting as your judge?” asked Nkunda.
Nkunda said that the hardliner elements within the CNDP are General John BoscoNtaganda who in a shocking twist is said to be leading a split of the CNDP. Ntaganda’s breakaway faction is said to be finalizing a list of its own delegation to send to the peace talks. This is likely to undermine the authority and leadership of General Nkunda.
Nkunda said that these developments are the work of Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame; “Kagame wants to control this part of DR Congo, tell him this is our country, we cahll solve our own problems as Congolese. And if he continues undermining my authority I will shame him in the world, we know about his interests here and it is not to protect the Tutsi of Congo but to rob its minerals, He is using Ntaganda as an element to disorganize the CNDP but he will never succeed.”
Ntaganda, according to CNDP highly placed sources is already holding meetings with the DR Congo government, in a consortium that involves the MONUC forces in eastern Congo about the possible ceasefire.
After the departure of Obasanjo, there were reports that 150 people were massacred at Kiwanja in the morning of 4 November 2004.
Nkunda’s forces were blamed for the killings and he denied the charges in the international press but while answering questions in Kinyarwanda, Nkunda said that Rwandan officers who were helping the CNDP were was too greedy and he was fearful of their recent maneuvers.
Nkunda further emphasized that neither he nor the CNDP were responsible for the massacres of Kiwanja but suspected that General Ntaganda who had not communicated with him for two days might have given the orders to ransack Kiwanja.
"And before we came back to Kiwanja the governor of Goma, in the morning, announced that in Kiwanja there were massacres. When I heard on the radio that there were massacres in Kiwanja, I called my guys [soldiers] on the ground and said, "Where are you?" They said, "We are in Rutshuru." I said, "Who is doing this?" They said they did not know, that they were in Rutshuru."
But General revealed that relations with his alleged backer; Rwanda are not good and that events leading to Rwanda’s recent cordial approach to mend relations with the DR Congo needs further scrutiny.
The renegade general warned Rwanda that Rwanda risked ‘great dangers’ if as it was announced over the weekend that his deputy General John BoscoNtaganda had dethroned Nkunda and was sending a separate team to peace negotiations and that the delegation would be backed by Rwanda.
Ntaganda, who has a UN arrest warrant on him issued for war crimes and crimes against humanity was not at the Jomba were Obasanjo and Nkunda held their first meeting along with Gertrude the executive director of the International Crisis committee of the Great Lakes Region for the CNDP to start negotiations with the government of DR Congo.
Ntaganda is said to be a Rwandan who was sent to DR Congo by President Paul Kagame to help General Laurent Nkunda in fighting against the perpetuators of the Rwandan genocide who roam free in DR Congo. However, many security experts say that Ntaganda is in fact Rwanda’s man sent to supervise and control areas where large mineral deposits and minefields are reported to be.
The experts say that Ntagnda’s presence in Congo explains why Rwanda is one of the leading exporters of gold in the GREAT lakes region even when the country has meager resources of the precious stone.
A New Times reporter; PaulusKayigwa who reported on this unusual Rwanda gold export figures for 2008 over the weekend was summarily dismissed from his job.
Ends
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