Congolese rebel chief Laurent Nkunda said today he would fight African peacekeeping troops if they attacked him, as concerns grew that east Congo's conflict could suck in neighbouring armies.
Leaders from Africa's southern and Great Lakes regions have offered to send troops to try to help pacify east Democratic Republic of Congo, where fighting between Mr Nkunda's Tutsi rebels and the army has uprooted hundreds of thousands of people.
Aid agencies in Congo's North Kivu province are struggling to provide shelter, food and medical care for more than 200,000 refugees around the provincial capital Goma, but say tens of thousands more are cut off in the bush. They warn of the risk of cholera and measles epidemics in the camps.
African and Western governments are worried the recent upsurge in fighting in North Kivu, which borders Rwanda and Uganda, risks drawing in Congo's neighbours as occurred during a previous 1998-2003 war. That war involved six African armies and the conflict and its aftermath killed several million people.
Countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) said after a regional summit in South Africa on Sunday the group would send military advisers to help the government of Congolese president Joseph Kabila.
SADC would send a peacekeeping force to east Congo "if and when necessary", its executive secretary Tomaz Salamao said.
Mr Nkunda, whose Tutsi fighters are battling Congo government soldiers (FARDC) and their Rwandan Hutu rebel (FDLR) and Mai-Mai militia allies, said he would welcome African peacekeepers if they came as an impartial force to stabilise North Kivu.
The United Nations, which already has its largest peacekeeping force in the world, 17,000 strong, in Congo, is seeking up to 3,000 extra troops to reinforce its operations there. It says its existing force is thinly stretched across a country the size of Western Europe where armed groups abound.
It was not immediately clear whether the proposed African peacekeepers would operate under the UN mandate or separately.
European Union foreign ministers meeting in Brussels today echoed African leaders' calls for a ceasefire to be respected and for a political solution for east Congo. But they did not mention any move to send European peacekeeping troops to Congo, an idea mooted last month by EU chairman France.
An EU official said a European military deployment to Congo was excluded for the moment.
Reuters