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RUTSHURU, DRCongo : Rebel leader Laurent Nkunda on Saturday slammed the planned deployment of extra UN troops in DR Congo saying they could not usher in peace as he held his first rally in an eastern town he seized last month.
About 1,500 people gathered at an overgrown stadium at Rutshuru, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of Goma -- the main city in Nord-Kivu province -- to see the cashiered general, a persistent thorn in the side of President Joseph Kabila.
Nkunda arrived in style, flanked by bodyguards and armed fighters and wielding his trademark cane, topped with an eagle's head, and sporting gold rimmed sunglasses.
He launched a strong warning to locals not to accept the additional 3,000 peacekeepers from the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or MONUC.
"They are sending another 3,000 Blue Helmets and you are applauding. You are mistaken!" the rangy Pentecostal Christian who sometimes sports badges saying "Rebels for Christ" said in a dramatic speech, full of Biblical references.
"We will not accept outsiders coming in to provide security for us here," he thundered. "Either you help us in the revolution or you keep quiet with MONUC. But if you wait for MONUC to bring you peace, you can wait forever."
He said: "We must unite to work to ensure our security. Every day you ask for something more but how long will you go on begging?"
There are now 17,000 troops from 18 nations, including 4,000 from India, in the UN mission in Democratic Republic of Congo, known as MONUC, making it the biggest UN peacekeeping operation in the world. About 5,000 of them are in Nord-Kivu.
Nkunda, also urged the region's disparate ethnic groups to "cohabit" peacefully.
"There is only one solution, that we co-exist peacefully," he said. "There is enough place for even foreigners."
Long simmering tensions between Nkunda and Kabila spilled over into a new conflict in August with the rebels accusing the government of discriminating against Congo's Tutsi minority, to which Nkunda belongs.
Nkunda's men withdrew from two key frontlines in Nord-Kivu this week, ostensibly to boost a peace mission by UN special envoy Olusegun Obasanjo, who is seeking to end the conflict and the ensuing humanitarian disaster.
But they remain poised outside Goma, where the conflict is centred.
Kabila, speaking in neighbouring Congo-Brazzaville on Friday, said the humanitarian situation was "dramatic and catastrophic" following the fighting.
"Nearly two million of our compatriots are dispersed around Goma and beyond," he said.
The UN peacekeeping force has been criticised for failing to protect the estimated 250,000 people displaced by the fighting, and atrocities by both the rebels and government forces.
With the UN Security Council Thursday having approved 3,000 reinforcements for MONUC, a Kinshasa government spokesman urged a new approach.
"It needs a mandate that is a lot more appropriate to the circumstances on the ground," Lamert Mende Omalanga told AFP.
The Security Council voted Thursday to send the reinforcements, who will remain as long as the security situation warrants.
A Congolese journalist with the UN-sponsored Radio Okapi was meanwhile shot dead late Friday at Bukavu in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the radio said.
Didace Namujimbo "was returning home last night. He was shot down a few metres from his home," the radio's editor in chief Leonard Mulamba told AFP.
Many armed groups, pro-government militias and rebels, operate in the unstable region which borders on Nord-Kivu, scene of fighting for nearly three months between the army and Nkunda's rebels.
The MONUC said there was a lull in fighting for a second straight day Saturday with no incidents reported in Nord-Kivu.
- AFP /ls
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