Congo rebels pull back to support UN initiative

Published on Tuesday 18 November 2008 21:22

REBELS in east Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) announced a military pullback yesterday to support a UN peace initiative and the government sacked the country's armed forces chief following a string of defeats.

Rebel leader Laurent Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) said it was withdrawing its Tutsi fighters 25 miles back from two fronts in North Kivu province to create zones separating them and government troops.

The CNDP said it was doing this to help efforts by a United Nations envoy, the former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, to end weeks of fighting that has driven a quarter of a million people from their homes and triggered a humanitarian emergency.

A rebel statement said the "separation zones" on the Kanyabayonga-Nyanzale and Kabasha-Kiwanja fronts should be occupied by UN peacekeepers.

The UN peacekeeping force in Congo said it was checking whether the announced rebel pullback was actually taking place.

"Separation of forces would be a good step," said the UN military spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Paul Dietrich.

After government forces in North Kivu fell back in disarray around Kanyabayonga, Joseph Kabila, the DRC's president, on Monday replaced his military chief of staff, General Dieudonne Kayembe, to try to bolster the fighting capacity of his troops.