U.N. Reports Rwandan Troops in Congo

GOMA, Congo — U.N. observers encountered what they believed to be about 100 Rwandan troops in eastern Congo, a U.N. official said Wednesday, marking the first reported sighting by the United Nations since Rwanda threatened to send forces against Rwandan Hutu rebels sheltering here.

The suspected Rwandan troops withdrew toward Rwanda after Tuesday’s encounter, M’Hand Ladjouzi, head of the U.N. mission at Goma, said at a news conference.

Ladjouzi did not say what the suspected 100 Rwandan troops were doing when the U.N. observers encountered them, whether they were armed or how they were traveling.

U.N. spokeswoman Patricia Tome in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, said the sighting was at Rutshuru, a town a few miles inside Congo.

A Rwandan diplomat denied that Rwanda had invaded, after a week of warnings that raised fears of a return to the six-nation war that devastated Congo, Africa’s third-biggest nation.

But the denial came even as a Western envoy in Kinshasa said that Rwandan President Paul Kagame had warned in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that his troops would carry out “surgical strikes” against rebels.

In the letter, which circulated among embassies in Congo, Kagame said military operations would last two weeks, according to the envoy, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

U.N. officials in Kinshasa denied any knowledge of the letter.

The U.N. Security Council scheduled closed-door consultations for today in response to Congo’s request for a meeting. Congo has asked the council to condemn Rwanda’s threat and impose sanctions.

Kagame had told Rwandan lawmakers Tuesday that Rwanda would act against 8,000 to 10,000 Rwandan Hutu rebels based in eastern Congo, saying a 5-month-old U.N.-led disarmament program had failed to neutralize the rebel forces.

Rwanda invaded eastern Congo in 1996 and 1998 to hunt down Rwandan Hutu combatants held responsible for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed.

The 1998 invasion sparked a war that split Congo. Peace accords by 2002 saw the withdrawal of foreign armies and the establishment of a power-sharing government.