M23 head meets Museveni; Congo army hits back

KINSHASA, Uganda/GOMA, Congo: The political leader of the M23 rebel group in the Democratic Republic of Congo headed to Uganda yesterday talks with President Yoweri Museveni, a spokesman for the group said.
Jean-Marie Runiga Lugerero “was summoned urgently to Kampala... for discussions with President Museveni,” spokesman Amani Kabasha told AFP. Kampala, which has been accused of supporting the rebellion in the DR Congo, is due to host a regional summit on the crisis tomorrow.
Congolese troops were fighting back yesterday against rebels who rejected calls from African leaders to quit the eastern city of Goma, captured earlier this week.
The rebel group seeking to overthrow the Congolese government focused its aim yesterday on seizing the strategic eastern town of Bukavu, which would mark the biggest gain in rebel territory in nearly a decade if it were to fall.
The fighters believed to be backed by neighboring Rwanda already have seized the provincial capital of Goma this week and later took the nearby town of Sake on Wednesday.
The violence has forced more than 100,000 people to flee, more than half of whom are children, according to the UN children’s agency.
While they have vowed to overthrow President Joseph Kabila’s government, they remain some 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) from the capital of Kinshasa in a country of dense jungle with few paved roads.
Meanwhile, hundreds of Congolese soldiers who had retreated from Goma days earlier were holed up in Minova, a lakeside city on the road to Bukavu.
“We are waiting for orders, but they haven’t come yet. We’re hungry and have spent five days sleeping in the bush under the rain,” said a Congolese army major who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
The rebels are believed to be backed by Rwanda, and to a smaller extent by Uganda, which are accused of equipping them with sophisticated arms, including night vision goggles and 120 mm mortars.
A report released Wednesday by the UN Group of Experts said both Rwanda and Uganda have “cooperated to support the creation and expansion of the political branch of M23 and have consistently advocated on behalf of the rebels.”
Rebel fighters seized the sprawling lakeside city of a million people on Tuesday after government soldiers retreated and UN peacekeepers gave up trying to defend it.
Regional and international leaders have been scrambling to halt the fresh conflagration in the Great Lakes, a region of many colonial-era frontiers and long a tinderbox of ethnic and political conflict, fuelled by mineral deposits.
On Wednesday, foreign ministers from the states of the Great Lakes region demanded the rebels leave Goma and halt their advance, and Kabila - in a concession to the rebels that fell short of opening talks - promised to look into their grievances.
“I’m not confident, because I’ve already waited for three months in Kampala for talks,” Runiga said of a recent spell in the capital of Uganda, which has tried to mediate in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).