Rwanda pushed UN Security Council members on Sunday to allow forcible repatriation and disarmament of Rwandan Hutu rebels in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo instead of a voluntary method the council favours. Some UN Security Council members, after a rare meeting in Nairobi to pressure Sudan and rebels from its south to finish a peace deal, are touring Africa’s volatile Great Lakes region where 3 million people have died from war, disease and hunger in the last decade.

“You can’t voluntarily disarm these combatants, many of whom are extremists, and I think asking them to voluntarily leave what they have been doing for the last 10 years is unattainable,” Rwandan President Paul Kagame told reporters at a news conference after the meeting. “I do not think it can work, and it has failed,” said Kagame, who led a Tutsi army that ran off the Hutus extremists who carried out Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. French Ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sabliere told reporters the council recognised the urgent need to disarm the dissidents, but said it should be done only with their consent.

“Our understanding is that there’s a decision and more willingness to disarm the rebels by the DRC government, assisted by MONUC (the UN mission in Congo), but this has to be on the basis of voluntary disarmament,” Sabliere said. Kagame said a September Security Council decision to send an additional 5,900 peacekeeping troops to the DRC to bolster a force of 10,800 already there would make no difference if their mandate is not strengthened to allow the use of force. In early November, UN peacekeepers joined thousands of government soldiers on joint patrols in eastern Congo’s South Kivu area to protect civilians and pressure Rwandan rebels to go home peacefully.

                                                                <B>Arthur Asiimwe</B>