Congo Tutsi rebel commanders say stop rebellion

GOMA, Congo (Reuters) - Military leaders of Congo's Tutsi rebels said on Friday they would stop fighting government troops, a move that appeared to sideline the group's founder, Laurent Nkunda.

The announcement followed a split in the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) between Nkunda and his military chief, General Bosco "Terminator" Ntaganda, who is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

Ntaganda, who said last week he had overthrown Nkunda as leader of the rebels, and 10 other senior rebel commanders signed a declaration ending hostilities with the Congolese army.

Nkunda has denied being overthrown and has condemned Ntaganda as a renegade.

The declaration was signed in the eastern city of Goma, the capital of Democratic Republic of Congo's conflict-torn North Kivu province, in front of Congolese Interior Minister Celestin Mbuyu Kabango and Rwanda's armed forces commander, General James Kabarebe.

The rebel commanders said they hoped their forces would be reintegrated into the national army.

There was no immediate reaction from Nkunda, who launched the Tutsi rebel movement in 2004, and it was not clear whether he supported the commanders' action. His representatives have been meeting government envoys at peace talks in Nairobi.

Before the internal split rebel fighters, who say they are defending Congo's Tutsi minority against their ethnic Hutu enemies of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), had routed the U.N.-backed Congolese army late last year in North Kivu, displacing a quarter of a million civilians.

PLAN TARGETS RWANDAN HUTU REBELS

The rebel declaration spelled out an offer made by Ntaganda on Thursday to help Congo and Rwanda fight and disarm the Rwandan Hutu FDLR fighters who operate in eastern Congo. Their armed presence there is seen as a root cause of the long-running conflict in the area.

Under international pressure to find a lasting peace, Congo and Rwanda have agreed a plan to forcibly disarm the FDLR, due to start before the end of March.

The deadly ethnic enmity between Tutsis and Hutus has fuelled years of conflict in eastern Congo since neighbouring Rwanda's 1994 genocide in which Hutu soldiers and Interahamwe militia killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

The genocide led to rebels and refugees spilling over the border into Congo, sowing the seeds for further violence there that erupted in a wider 1998-2003 war which sucked in neighbouring states.

Previous internationally backed plans to bring peace to North Kivu and integrate the Tutsi rebels into the army have proved short-lived, collapsing amid further fighting.

The Tutsi rebel commanders said military roadblocks in North Kivu would be lifted to allow civilians to return home. They also urged the Congolese government to pass an amnesty law that covered acts of "insurrection and war."

In April last year, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Ntaganda, accusing him of recruiting children under 15 to fight in a bloody ethnic-based conflict in northeast Ituri district.

Some human rights campaigners say they believe Ntaganda may have broken with Nkunda because he thought the CNDP leader was going to hand him over following a massacre of civilians at Kiwanja in November, after rebels led by Ntaganda took the town.

(Writing by Pascal Fletcher, editing by Alistair Thomson and Tim Pearce)