Rwanda Backing Nkunda’s Rebel Army in Eastern Congo, UN Says


By Franz Wild and Bill Varner

Dec. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Rwanda is supporting rebels in Democratic Republic of Congo, while the Congolese government is arming a Rwandan militia, a United Nations report said yesterday.

The report to the UN Security Council “found evidence that the Rwandan authorities have been complicit in the recruitment of soldiers, including children, have facilitated the supply of military equipment, and have sent officers and units from the Rwandan Defense Forces” to the DRC. The support is for the National Congress for the Defense of the People, or CNDP, led by Laurent Nkunda.

A “Group of Experts” appointed by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to monitor UN sanctions in Congo also cited “extensive collaboration” between Congolese government troops and rebel groups in the country’s North Kivu province that fight against Nkunda, the report said. Groups including the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR, are getting government support.

Nkunda says he is fighting to protect Congo’s Tutsi minority from militias such as the ethnic Hutu FDLR that took refuge in the east of the country after participating in the genocide in neighboring Rwanda in 1994. Since August, more than 250,000 people have been displaced by the fighting, the UN said.

The CNDP is accused of war crimes by the UN. Its military leader General Bosco Ntaganda is wanted by the International Criminal Court for recruiting child soldiers.

The Congolese rebels’ funding sources include local and export taxes, payments from landowners in areas they control and the charcoal trade, the report said.

‘Organized Structure’

Jason Stearns, the coordinator for the Group of Experts, declined to say whether Rwandan President Paul Kagame ordered the assistance to Nkunda’s forces.

“We don’t want to speculate on who is giving the orders,” Stearns told reporters at the UN in New York. “It is obvious that given the fairly organized structure of Rwanda’s government there is certainly knowledge of this. They must know and they haven’t done anything to bring it to an end.”

Tribert Rujugiro Ayabatwa, an adviser to Kagame, “plays a role in CNDP financing,” evidence showed, according to the report. Assistance from inside Rwanda would violate a 2007 commitment the country made to stamp out support for Nkunda’s army.

Yolande Makolo, Kagame’s press officer, said she would e- mail any official government position on the report. Rwanda Investment Group, of which Rujugiro is the chairman, doesn’t list a phone number in online directories and no Web address was available.

Laurent N.

Congolese President Joseph Kabila’s government in Kinshasa has long accused Rwanda of supporting Nkunda, a claim that has been denied.

In an e-mail seen by the UN panel, Rujugiro thanked a Dubai- based employee for arranging the payment of “$120,000 to cover the salaries of the soldiers for our friend Laurent N.”

Rujugiro has been in the U.K. facing a South African extradition order on tax evasion charges since October, according to the UN report.

Raphael Soriano, the brother of a provincial Congolese governor, was also behind payments to the CNDP, through intermediaries such as Nkunda’s wife, the group said.

A woman who answered Soriano’s mobile phone in Belgium hung up when a reporter from Bloomberg News asked to speak to him. Another mobile phone was switched off.

The FDLR makes millions of dollars a year from illegal mining of resources including tin and gold, according to the report. The minerals are sold to international companies including refiners via Congolese exporters, it said.

The FDLR receives most of its weapons and ammunitions from Congo’s national army, the report said.

It may not be in the interest of government forces to “end the conflict in eastern DRC as long as their units are able to deploy to, and profit from, mining areas,” the report said.

jk2008