U.N. peacekeepers deployed an additional brigade in eastern Congo amid reports that Rwanda was threatening rebels based in its huge neighbor, U.N. officials said yesterday. The alleged threat jeopardizes the peace process in Congo, spokesman Fred Eckhard said at U.N. headquarters in New York. A spokeswoman for the U.N. in Congo, Patricia Tome, said Rwanda had warned it will launch an attack "very soon" on Rwandan Hutu rebels taking refuge in east Congo. Alfred Ndahiro, a spokesman for Rwandan President Paul Kagame, said, "I know absolutely nothing of this." Rwanda has invaded Congo twice in recent years - in 1996 and in 1998 - to hunt Rwandan Hutu rebels, many of whom instigated the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which extremists from the Hutu majority orchestrated the slaughter of more than 500,000 people, mostly from the Tutsi minority.
| Rwandans are practicing their own offensive strategy, getting these guys before they come back home. |
The U.N. peacekeepers deployed in eastern Congo were part of a 5,900-member addition to the peacekeeping force in the country, which until now numbered about 10,800 men. Rwanda's 1998 invasion of Congo drew in the armies of a half-dozen African nations. More than 3 million people, mostly civilians, died in fighting or from famine and disease that followed. |