WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2008-11-11 Time: 07:00:07 Posted By: Jan
By Hereward Holland
Goma – Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) rebel chief Laurent Nkunda said he would fight African peacekeeping troops if they attacked him, as concerns grew that east DRC’s conflict could suck in neighbouring armies.
Leaders from Africa’s southern and Great Lakes regions have offered to send troops to try to help pacify east DRC, where fighting between Nkunda’s Tutsi rebels and the army has uprooted hundreds of thousands of people.
Countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) said after a regional summit in South Africa on Sunday the group would send military advisers to help the government of DRC President Joseph Kabila.
SADC would send a peacekeeping force to east Congo “if and when necessary”, its executive secretary Tomaz Salamao said. Analysts say that to avert the risk of a wider regional war, world and regional powers need to exert firm pressure on both the DRC and Rwanda to demobilise rival rebel groups.
The international community has already invested billions of dollars to build and maintain peace in the DRC.
“To not invest hugely in diplomatic terms right now would risk it all,” Francois Grignon and Fabienne Hara, Africa programme director and vice-president of International Crisis Group, wrote recently.
Commenting on SADC’s offer of troops, Rwandan Foreign Minister Rosemary Museminali said: “There should be a ceasefire and a political solution.”
European foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday also called for a political settlement. Congo’s government has asked neighbour Angola, which backed it during the 1998-2003 war, for help.
The appearance in North Kivu of Portuguese-speaking soldiers on the government side has fuelled speculation Angola may have already sent troops. Angola’s Foreign Ministry denied this.
Nkunda, whose Tutsi fighters are battling DRC government soldiers (FARDC) and their Rwandan Hutu rebel (FDLR) and Mai-Mai militia allies, said he would welcome African peacekeepers if they came as an impartial force to stabilise North Kivu.
But, speaking to Reuters by telephone from eastern DRC, he added: “If they come in and fight alongside the FARDC and the FDLR…they will share the same shame as the DRC government.
“If SADC engages like this, they will have made a mistake…I am ready to fight them,” Nkunda said.
Some military experts expressed doubts about how quickly a SADC security force could be dispatched to east DRC and how effective it would be against Nkunda’s guerrilla army and other marauding armed factions.
“This is good rhetoric, but I’m not sure it will happen,” Henri Boshoff, a military analyst for the Institute for Security Studies in Johannesburg, said.