By Joe Bavier
KINSHASA (Reuters) - Democratic Republic of Congo accused its neighbour Rwanda on Thursday of sending troops into its territory in support of Congolese Tutsi rebels and requested an emergency meeting of the U.N Security Council.
Rwanda quickly denied the accusation, calling it "ridiculous," while the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo (MONUC) said it was checking the allegation by sending patrols along the border in eastern North Kivu province.
Congolese Foreign Minister Antipas Mbusa Nyamwisi said a Rwandan incursion took place after his government's army had come under repeated attack from Tutsi rebels led by renegade General Laurent Nkunda in North Kivu.
"The Rwandans are indeed there. They now want to take Goma (the North Kivu provincial capital)," Nyamwisi told Reuters.
For more than a decade, east Congo has been a volatile tinderbox of ethnic tension that grew out of Rwanda's 1994 genocide and are at the root of the conflict in North Kivu.
"Yesterday, through your patriotism, you foiled the plan of those people who dream only of our country's Balkanisation and surrender," Congolese President Joseph Kabila said in a televised address to the nation late on Thursday.
Rwanda has invaded Congo in the past, including a major intervention during a regional conflict between 1998 and 2003.
At the United Nations, Congo's U.N. ambassador Ileka Atoki sent a letter to the Security Council requesting a meeting, asking it to condemn the Rwandan action and demand the immediate withdrawal of the Rwandan troops from Congo's territory.
Several council diplomats told Reuters that they had not yet seen Atoki's letter and it was unclear if or when the council would meet to discuss the issue.
Atoki said Kinshasa had hard evidence to back its charges. "We have captured some Rwandan soldiers," Atoki said, adding that his government would soon show them to the media.
NO DEFINITIVE PROOF
MONUC military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Paul Dietrich said U.N. peacekeepers had yet to receive definitive proof of the Congolese accusations.
"In the past, Nkunda has recruited ex-combatants in Rwanda. MONUC is trying to verify all allegations with witnesses and ground patrols along the length of the border," he said.
In recent months, Congo has lobbied MONUC to play a more active military role in putting down Nkunda's rebellion.
A U.N. spokeswoman in New York said MONUC was in contact with Nkunda's National Congress for People's Defence and the Kinshasa government and was urging them both to pull back to their previous positions and avoid further clashes.
A government army base at Rumangabo, about 40 km (25 miles) north of Goma, was captured by armed attackers on Wednesday.
"Nkunda is just the tree hiding the forest ... Our military intelligence indicates that it was a Rwandan battalion that took Rumangabo," Nyamwisi said.
"The war has already begun. Now we must stop it," he added, calling for talks with Rwanda.
Rejecting the Congolese allegation, Richard Sezibera, Rwanda's ambassador to the Great Lakes region, said: "There are U.N. MONUC troops in those areas. If Rwandan troops were there, would not the whole world know by now?"
Nyamwisi said Jean Ping, head of the African Union Commission, was due to arrive in Kinshasa on Friday to try to defuse tension between Congo and Rwanda.
The war that began in 1998 sucked in neighbouring states and led to a humanitarian crisis in which an estimated 5.4 million people have died, mainly through hunger and disease.
(For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com/)
(Additional reporting by Frank Nyakairu in Kigali and Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations: Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Charles Dick)
