LONDON (AFP) — Britain on Thursday called on Rwandan President Paul Kagame to use his "influence" over Congolese rebels led by general Laurent Nkunda to end to violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
But British Foreign Minister Mark Malloch-Brown, who is in Kigali after three days in DR Congo, said he would not "fall into the trap of believing that somehow this rebel group is just a puppet group whose strings are pulled from Kigali.
"One's got to get to the roots in the Congo itself, not believe that somehow the solution just lies in here in Kigali," he told the BBC.
Ahead of a meeting with Kagame in Kigali, he said he would ask the Rwandan leader "to use his influence on the rebel movement" involved in the violence.
Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) has clashed with Congolese government forces and their proxies in the eastern province of Nord-Kivu since late August, displacing more than 250,000 people.
On Wednesday, his rebel group withdrew from two key battlefronts but threatened to return if government forces occupied the zones. However, fresh fighting was reported Thursday between a pro-government militia and rebels.
Under a November 2007 deal reached in the Kenyan capital, Kinshasa was to disarm Rwandan Hutu rebels wanted over the 1994 genocide and operating in eastern Congo while Kigali was to stop supporting armed groups, including Congolese rebels using Rwanda as a staging ground.
Malloch-Brown said the "shadow" of the 1994 genocide, in which the UN says 800,000 people were killed, "hangs over everything we do in Congo".
He added, though, that interventions from the UN, European Union, and former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo had helped to ease tensions.
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