By Norm Dixon

Leaders of the Democratic Republic of Congo have angrily denied claims by the United Nations and western governments that investigations into rumours of human rights violations (during the uprising that deposed the Mobutu dictatorship) have been hindered by the new government. On October 2, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan ordered leaders of a UN investigation team to leave Congo “for consultations”.

The reluctance of the UN, the west and the big aid agencies to admit their crucial role in resuscitating the forces responsible for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda is at the root of the stand-off.

The Congo government, led by Laurent Kabila, says that the UN agreed to investigate the massacres in eastern Congo that sparked the uprising. Since its arrival, the UN team has refused to begin its probe in the east, insisting it first visit Mbandaka in the north-west on the Congo River.

“The UN commission is more occupied with politics than with its inquiry”, foreign minister Bizima Karaha charged. “The commission is going around asking opposition politicians whether our government is democratic. That is not its role.”

Karaha denied that the team had been prevented from beginning its mission. “The commission can go to the east whenever it wants, but they do not want to. But they have to ask us. It needs protection; we must ensure their security.”

The UN also refused to provide funds for Congo security personnel to accompany the UN team. Bands of Mobutuists and Rwandan Interahamwe militias remain active in the east, launching terrorist attacks on farms, schools and government offices in Congo and western Rwanda.

Reconstruction and planning minister Etienne-Richard Mbaya accused the UN of acting in bad faith by violating the conditions agreed between the Kinshasa and New York. He accused the UN of “trying to provoke the pretext to leave” with its demand to visit Mbandaka.

The Kabila government is convinced that the UN is not prepared to investigate Interahamwe atrocities, so as to absolve itself from blame.

In August, Karaha demanded that the UN account for its actions during the two and half years that Rwandan refugees were in eastern Congo. He challenged the UN to prove that the 200,000 refugees, repeatedly claimed to be “missing” or “unaccounted for”, existed in the first place.

Congo argues that the vast majority of refugees returned in the first few months of the uprising, leaving all but the hard-core Interahamwe, their families and captives, totalling a few tens of thousands.

Following the 1994 overthrow of the genocidal Rwandan regime -- responsible for the deaths of more than 500,000 Tutsi and anti-government Hutu Rwandans -- the French army intervened to usher the killers across the Congo border.

Under French protection, tens of thousands of Rwandan former soldiers and death squad members -- the Interahamwe -- drove almost a million Hutu refugees into Congo. There the UN and international aid agencies allowed the armed mass murderers to rule the camps with an iron fist as they openly prepared to reinvade Rwanda and complete the genocide.

In league with the army of Mobutu, the Interahamwe launched a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Congolese Tutsis in North and South Kivu provinces in 1996. The pogroms were part of a plan to build a “pure” Hutu rear base from which to reinvade Rwanda. This was supported by Mobutu and tolerated by the UN, aid agencies and western governments, which continued to pour aid into the camps.

When the Tutsis of South Kivu fought back, they triggered the anti-Mobutu uprising which liberated North and South Kivu and freed the Hutu refugees -- who streamed home in their hundreds of thousands -- then swept across Congo, culminating in the liberation of Kinshasa in May.

The hard-core Interahamwe and their hostages moved west, fighting side by side with Mobutu's retreating forces to the last. Casualties amongst the armed Rwandans and refugee deaths resulting from the callous tactics of the contras are now being blamed on the forces that overthrew Mobutu's 32-year, western-backed tyranny.

“The front line was where you had refugees, with women and children being systematically used as human shields”, Andre Kapanga, Congo's ambassador to the UN, explained on September 17. “The people who committed genocide are now being treated as `refugees'. It is outrageous.”

The European Union has threatened to cut off aid to Congo if the UN investigation team does not complete its “mission”. Around US$185 million of project money was again frozen on September 15 at an EU ministerial meeting until the impasse over the UN team was resolved. The money had been first frozen during the civil war.

“The projects which have been frozen were interrupted under Mobutu for security reasons. Now the EU is making the unfreezing of these conditional for Kabila”, an unnamed western diplomat critical of the decision pointed out on September 23. “That is difficult to defend.”

Congo finance minister Mwanananga Mwapenga blamed the hostility of the EU and sections of the UN on the French government's opposition to the Kabila government.

“France is a big player in the EU, and they are not too happy that their friends were kicked out. I don't think they will come and embrace or beat the drum for us. They will try to give us a hard time in the hope that we will fade away”, he said during a visit to Hong Kong on September 25.

Addressing a regional meeting of post and telecommunications ministers in Kinshasa on September 23, President Kabila said that Africa should learn to be independent and ignore dictates from foreign powers.

On September 29, he continued the theme during a visit to Lusaka, Zambia. “We have problems with the western donors who are harassing us. But I want to assure you that I will fight this to maintain dignity in Congo”, Kabila told Zambian President Frederick Chiluba.

Kabila also hit out at the inaction of the UN investigation team: “[Annan's] people are sending false reports from posh hotel rooms and have failed to go where the massacres are alleged to have taken place ...

“In the 1960s Congo suffered from the manipulation of the UN [under the cover of a UN intervention, the radical government of Patrice Lumumba was overthrown] but it would be irresponsible of me to allow them to bring Congo to its knees. They will fail if they are expecting that I will bow down.”

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