Rebel split in Congo threatens Nkunda's command

Published on Thursday 8 January 2009 20:59

REBELS led by a high-ranking commander in eastern Congo denounced the authority of founding leader Laurent Nkunda yesterday, signalling a split in the movement just as it is holding talks with the Congolese government.

A group of rebels headed by Bosco Ntaganda, the movement's chief of staff, claim they have dismissed Nkunda as leader of the National Council for the Defence of the People, or CNDP. Nkunda's spokesman, Bertrand Bisimwa, dismissed the allegations, calling it a "huge deception and a blatant indiscipline."

More than 250,000 people have been driven from their homes since violence flared in August and some 17,000 UN peacekeepers have not been able to quell the chaos.

Nkunda, an ethnic Tutsi, says his rebels are fighting to protect Congo's minority Tutsis from the Hutu militia that fled here after helping perpetrate the 1994 genocide that killed more than half a million Tutsis in Rwanda. But his critics contend he is more interested in power and Congo's mineral wealth.

The rebels and representatives of the Congolese government began meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, again Wednesday to try to broker a solution to the latest outbreak of fighting. The last round of talks stalled in December.

But Desire Kamanzi, a spokesman for Ntaganda said the group opposed to Nkunda's leadership could not accept the representative for the talks because the person had been nominated by Nkunda.