DR Congo rebels reject calls to end offensive

Congo, Nov 22: DR Congo rebels on Thursday rejected international calls to pull out of the strategic eastern city of Goma, demanding peace talks with President Joseph Kabila before ending an offensive that has stoked fears of a wider conflict and humanitarian catastrophe.

"There must first be a dialogue with President Kabila," one of the leaders of the M23, Jean-Marie Runiga Lugerero, told the news agency by telephone two days after they took Goma.

"There must be dialogue and solutions before anything takes place."

As alarm grows in the international community about the unrest in the war-blighted central African nation, Kabila and his rival Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame are due to meet at a regional summit on the crisis on Saturday in Uganda.

The United Nations accused the M23 rebels of carrying out summary executions in their sweep across the east and again charged that both Rwanda and Uganda were backing the group, whose chain of command is believed to include wanted war crimes suspect Bosco Ntaganda.

Rwanda and Uganda deny the charges.

The M23 rebels, fresh from their easy capture of Goma on Tuesday, claimed yesterday to have seized another nearby town and threatened to march all the way to the capital Kinshasa, about 1,500 kilometres away.

"We are not going to stop at Goma, we will go as far as Bukavu, Kisangani and Kinshasa," M23 spokesman Vianney Kazarama told a crowd at a stadium in the lakeside city, also demanding that Kabila stand down.

Rebels said they had also seized Sake, about 20 kilometres northwest of Goma -the capital of the mineral-rich North Kivu region and vowed to press on southwards to Bukavu, the other major city on the border with Rwanda.

But at talks in Kampala yesterday, Kabila and the leaders of Rwanda and Uganda insisted that the mainly ethnic Tutsi rebels must immediately pull out of Goma.

Kagame and President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda "made it clear that even if there were legitimate grievances by the mutinying group known as M23, they cannot accept the expansion of this war," said a joint statement issued after the talks.

The United States also renewed calls for M23 to halt their latest offensive in a deeply troubled and impoverished country, the largest in central Africa.

"We want to see them immediately withdraw from Goma and cease any further advances and permanently disband," State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner told journalists.

"We condemn any and all outside support of M23, any military assistance to the rebels in violation to the UN arms embargo."