GOMA, Congo (AFP)--Laurent Nkunda's rebel group warned Sunday that any decision by the government of the Congo to accept Angolan military assistance could ignite the Great Lakes region.
"It would risk setting the Great Lakes region on fire," said Bertrand Bisimwa, a spokesman for the National Congress for the Defense of the People led by renegade Tutsi general Laurent Nkunda.
"It demonstrates the government's willingness to involve former international warmongers in the current crisis.
"The government should favor political solutions, by engaging in talks with the CNDP, over military solutions. The country's population is already suffering because of this," he added.
Bisimwa's reaction comes after the Congo's foreign minister admitted Sunday that while Angola had not yet deployed any troops into the country, it could do so in the future.
"For the moment, there aren't any, but the Angolan position without any doubt is to support Congo," Alexis Thambwe Mwamba said at an emergency summit of the Southern African Development Community, called to consider the unrest in The Democratic Republic of the Congo and the political standoff in Zimbabwe.
Both Angola and Congo are members of the 15-nation bloc, and Luanda sided with Kinshasa in the 1998-2003 regional conflict that erupted in the country then known as Zaire.
Kinshasa has repeatedly denied that foreign troops are on its soil to support pro-government troops battling Nkunda's rebel forces - an assertion echoed by the UN mission, which has 17,000 blue-helmeted peacekeepers on the ground.
Click here to go to Dow Jones NewsPlus, a web front page of today's most important business and market news, analysis and commentary: http://www.djnewsplus.com/al?rnd=GQSEj%2BjGxj4TSpr2pdZc4Q%3D%3D. You can use this link on the day this article is published and the following day.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 09, 2008 15:39 ET (20:39 GMT)

Publié le 09 novembre 2008 Copyright © 2008 Dowjones