Renegade forces withdraw from eastern Congo city; second day of violent protests in capital

Friday, June 4th 2004, 5:53 am

By: News On 6

BUKAVU, Congo (AP) _ Renegade commanders withdrew more troops Friday from a strategic eastern city in Congo, while rioters in the capital threw rocks at police in a second day of unrest over the failure of government and U.N. forces to defend Bukavu.

Gen. Laurent Nkunda and Col. Jules Mutebutsi said only about 120 of their forces remained in Bukavu, 930 miles northeast of Kinshasa, and that those would be out by Friday afternoon.

U.N. officials estimate that Nkunda has between 2,000 and 4,000 troops, while Mutebutsi controls several hundred fighters.

Wednesday's capture of Bukavu by the former rebel commanders posed the most serious challenge yet to the transitional government set up after the 1998-2002 war. More than 3.5 million died during the five years of fighting, mostly from disease and famine.

A U.N. commander in Bukavu, a strategic trading center on the border with Rwanda, confirmed the pullout had begun Thursday night. Brig. Gen. Jan Isberg pledged to use force to ``disarm and arrest'' any armed renegade fighter found in the city by Saturday.

Anti-government and anti-U.N. riots that erupted in the capital the day after Bukavu's fall revealed the weakness of President Joseph Kabila's government, even on its home turf in the west.

Mobs blamed Congo's army for giving up the city and Congo's 10,800-strong U.N. force for standing by as it was seized by Nkunda and Mutebutsi.

Kabila addressed the country on national television late Thursday night in an effort to calm the situation.

``I understand your anger and indignation that you expressed when Bukavu fell. This shows your attachment to national unity,'' he said. ``Nevertheless, the solidarity you're expressing cannot at all justify the excesses that took place.''

He also continued to insist that Rwandan forces were in Bukavu, a charge the Rwandan foreign minister has strongly denied, and U.N. peacekeepers say they have no evidence to support.

Nkunda and Mutebutsi said they took military action because the local military commander was persecuting the Congolese Tutsi minority in Bukavu.

``I'm not a mutineer because I'm not fighting the government. I just came to kick out troops ... who were killing a section of the Congolese community,'' Nkunda said Friday. ``I have not set up an administration; I respected the government order to pull out of the city _ all this indicates that I'm not here to fight the government.''

In the capital, Kinshasa, U.N. troops shot and killed at least two protesters who stormed a U.N. base in a day of massive protests Thursday. Violent demonstrations resumed Friday, although on a smaller scale.

Milling crowds heaped piles of tires, scraps of wood and tree branches to block streets on the sprawling capital's outskirts. Demonstrators burned tires and hurled stones at passing police cars.

Congolese security forces armed with assault rifles were out in force in the heart of Kinshasa, patrolling in armored vehicles. U.N. officials said some U.N. workers had been kidnapped, then released.

Jean-Marie Guehenno, the U.N. undersecretary-general for peacekeeping, blamed the violence on unreasonable expectations among Congolese about the peacekeepers' ability to control militants.

``There's an expectation that (the U.N. mission), with its limited resources, could do everything,'' Guehenno said in New York. ``I think it's likely we will need more troops.''

In Bukavu, renegade forces started pulling out of the city late Thursday under a deal that will leave U.N. troops, rather than government forces, in charge of security there, Isberg said.

The civil war drew in the armies of six foreign nations and split the country.

The war began when Rwanda and Uganda backed Congolese rebels seeking to overthrow the post-Mobutu government of Kabila's father, Laurent Kabila. Rwanda accused Laurent Kabila's regime of failing to contain ethnic militias behind the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which chiefly targeted minority Tutsi.

Nkunda and Mutebutsi are Congolese Tutsi and wartime members of a rebel group allied to Rwanda.