Rwanda's ghosts stalk DR Congo

The UN, the European Union and the US are all trying to find a way to end to the fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo. BBC World Affairs correspondent Alan Little considers what the rebels there hope to achieve.

Laurent Nkunda believes the genocide perpetrators are as deadly as ever

General Laurent Nkunda's rebel force is motivated primarily by fear.

They have taken to arms because they believe the genocide that killed up to million Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda in 1994 has never really ended.

The Tutsis of eastern DR Congo have never felt safe.

They say many of the Hutu militiamen who perpetrated that genocide fled into the hills and forests of the area, where they have continued to pursue genocide against the local Tutsi population.

There is also sound reason for the rebels to distrust the Congolese army. The army, when the country was still called Zaire, was a strong ally of the genocidal regime in Rwanda.

When the guilty men of Rwanda's killing fields fled into Congo, they were given safe haven there.

No protection

The rebel force wants the perpetrators of the genocide returned to Rwanda to face trial but these men are now so integrated into local Congolese military groups and alliances that it is now almost impossible to see how this could be achieved.

Neither do the Tutsi rebels much trust the United Nations force. There was, after all, a multinational force in Rwanda in 1994 led by the despairing Canadian General Romeo Dallaire.

And yet when the killing started, the UN provided no protection.

Moreover, the UN and international aid agencies fed, watered and sheltered the Hutus of Rwanda for two years after the genocide, knowing all along that the refugee camps that international money sustained were bases from which the former killers could organise, plot and operate.

Gen Nkunda's Tutsi rebels are unlikely to lay down their arms as long as this perceived threat to their very existence remains.