Congo's peace process has "broken down" and needs fixing, the country's main former rebel group said today.
Mr Azarius Ruberwa, head of RCD
Leaders of the RCD-Goma group, most of whom are Tutsi, gathered for talks in their stronghold, Goma - a town in the east of the former Zaire from where they launched their Rwandan-backed insurgency in 1998.
Western diplomats in Kinshasa said there was a risk the RCD might pull out of the transitional government meant to shepherd the Democratic Republic of Congo to elections in 2005 after a five-year civil war.
"The process has broken down and we need to repair this break down," Mr Azarius Ruberwa, the head of RCD and one of Congo's four vice presidents, told United Nations' radio.
The group's comment came after 160 Congolese Tutsi refugees were massacred in neighbouring Burundi.
Mr Ruberwa and other RCD senior officials yesterday attended the mass burial of the 160 people shot, hacked and burned to death on Friday night at a refugee camp in western Burundi.
"We need to stop, re-read the [peace] agreement and the conclusions of the negotiations because it is incomprehensible that, during a peace process, genocide of Congolese people takes place abroad," he said.
A Hutu rebel group fighting in Burundi has claimed responsibility for the attack, but the RCD has accused the Congolese army of taking part in the killing.
Renegade RCD soldiers launched a revolt in eastern Congo in June, saying they wanted to protect Congolese Tutsi - known as Banyamulenge - living in the area.
Both Rwanda and Burundi have said they might cross into Congo if the Kinshasa government fails to disarm the Hutu rebels still on its territory and their allied militia.
Tiny Rwanda has already invaded Africa's third biggest nation twice, in 1996 and in 1998, to rout out Hutu extremists who fled there after committing the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
Rwanda 's second invasion triggered the war which at its height dragged in six African armies. Three million people died, mostly from hunger and disease.