DRC updateJUNE 25, 09:27 EDT
Congolese Rebels Agree To Withdraw
By HRVOJE HRANJSKI
Associated Press Writer
KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) ? The main Congolese rebels fighting a two-year war against President Laurent Kabila have agreed to join Rwandan and Ugandan armies in withdrawing from the north Congo city of Kisangani, a rebel spokesman said Sunday.
Control of the Congo River port city is then to be turned over to the United Nations, spokesman Kin-Kiey Mulumba said.
Initially, the rebels of the Rwandan-backed Congolese Rally for Democracy had refused to leave Kisangani, where a week of fighting between Rwandan and Ugandan armies has left more than 500 people dead, most of them civilians.
But an agreement reached Saturday with Gen. Muntaga Diallo ? the Senegalese commander of the U.N. observer team in Congo ? calls for the rebels to withdraw from the city center, but remain at the city's two airports alongside U.N. military observers, the spokesman said.
The fighting in Kisangani ended June 10, when the Rwandan army routed the Ugandan troops from the northern edge of the city. Since then, both armies have completed withdrawing to points 60 miles outside the city, as demanded by the U.N. Security Council.
``Our main troops are going to leave the center of the city. We shall leave behind the demining teams and some force at the two airports,'' Mulumba said.
A battalion of peacekeepers is expected to arrive mid-July, reinforcing 30 unarmed U.N. observers in Kisangani, Mulumba said by telephone from Goma, the eastern rebel stronghold where Saturday's meeting with Diallo took place.
A peace plan signed in August between Kabila and the rebels calls for a 5,537-strong force of observers and soldiers to oversee the cease-fire and withdrawal of all foreign troops in Congo.
Apart from Rwanda and Uganda, who back rival rebel factions, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola have troops and arms in the Central African country to support Kabila.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said he would meet soon with Rwandan President Paul Kagame about defusing tensions between their armies after the fighting in Kisangani, according to the Ugandan state-owned Sunday Vision newspaper. Museveni did not say where or when the meeting would take place.
In Harare, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe said a mini-summit of Congo's allies would be held Sunday with the presidents of Angola and Namibia to discuss the peace process.
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