Congo rebel chief says "war" if no talks

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By Hereward Holland

JOMBA, Congo (Reuters) - Congolese Tutsi rebel leader General Laurent Nkunda threatened war Saturday unless Congo's government entered a new round of talks with him.

Nkunda, whose forces have routed government troops and gained swathes of territory in North Kivu province in the east of Democratic Republic of Congo since launching a new offensive in August, has repeatedly demanded negotiations with the government.

Nkunda said he had been told by the United Nations' special envoy, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, that Kinshasa had accepted the principle of talks.

"If there is no negotiation, let us say then there is war," Nkunda told reporters after meeting Obasanjo in the rebel commander's native village, Jomba.

"I know that (the government) has no capacity to fight, so they have only one choice: negotiations," he said.

"We asked for a response as to where, when, and with whom we are going to do these talks. For us, we propose Nairobi and for the mediator we proposed chief Obasanjo," Nkunda said.

Obasanjo was in Congo on his second mission in two weeks aimed at ending fighting in North Kivu that has displaced some 250,000 civilians and at one point brought Nkunda's troops to within 10 km (6 miles) of the provincial capital, Goma.

The U.N. envoy, who met President Joseph Kabila in the capital of the mineral-rich central African country Friday, has recently pressed for talks.

Government ministers this week rebuffed the possibility of direct negotiations with Nkunda, calling for him to return to an earlier peace pact signed in January.

Emerging from his one-hour meeting with the rebel leader, Obasanjo avoided questions.

"We have advanced the course of peace," he said.

SHAKY Cease-fire

A cease-fire declared by Nkunda has halted battles with government troops and brought nearly two weeks of relative calm.

But his men have continued attacking Congolese and Rwandan militia allies of the government, sending thousands of refugees fleeing east into Uganda.

The rebels seized the town of Ishasha, on the border with Uganda, Thursday.

The U.N. peacekeeping mission said clashes between Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) and armed groups erupted for a second day near Masisi town Saturday.

The roots of the North Kivu conflict stem from Rwanda's 1994 genocide, when extremist Hutu militias killed some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus before fleeing into Congo.

That led to two wars and a humanitarian crisis that killed more than 5 million people, mostly from hunger and disease.

Nkunda accuses Kabila of arming Rwandan Hutu rebels, including some perpetrators of the 1994 genocide, to fight alongside the weak and chaotic Congolese army.

Around 1 million civilians have been displaced by clashes between the CNDP, the army, local Mai Mai militias, and Rwandan rebels since Nkunda relaunched his insurgency in late 2006.

The U.N. Security Council agreed earlier this month to send 3,000 more troops to boost Congo's beleaguered mission, the world's largest peacekeeping force with around 17,000 soldiers and police.

Aid agencies, struggling to feed hundreds of thousands of civilians housed in camps or cut off in the bush, fear the reinforcements may arrive too late to prevent more bloodshed.

(Additional reporting by Joe Bavier in Kinshasa; Editing by Daniel Magnowski and Angus MacSwan)

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