KIBUMBA, Congo - Thousands of war-weary refugees set out on foot for their homes in eastern Congo on Friday, taking advantage of a cease-fire as American and UN envoys joined efforts there to find a political solution to the region's long-running rebellion.
Troops from Laurent Nkunda's renegade movement manned checkpoints outside Goma, the eastern provincial capital where they halted their advance Wednesday and called the truce after a surge of fighting this week. He said he wanted the cease-fire to allow humanitarian help to get through and refugees to go home.
The conflict, which has erupted into the worst fighting here in years, is fueled by festering ethnic hatreds left over from the Rwandan genocide and the country's unrelenting civil wars. Nkunda claims the Congolese government has not protected ethnic Tutsis from the Rwandan Hutu militia that escaped to Congo after helping slaughter half a million Rwandan Tutsis in 1994.
All sides also are believed to fund fighters by illegally mining Congo's vast mineral riches -- meaning they have no financial interest in stopping the fighting. Demand for minerals has fueled Congo's conflicts for years. Nkunda has complained about a $9 billion agreement in which China gets access to Congo's minerals in return for building a highway and railroad that would open up the remote mining interior to southern neighbors and a port on the Atlantic.
Tens of thousands of people who fled their homes in recent days to get away from the battlefront between Congo's army and the rebels have sought shelter where they could, scattered around the region, trying to keep their families together.
"The cease-fire is fragile," said Alan Doss, the top UN envoy in Congo, who flew into Goma with the senior U.S. envoy for Africa, Jendayi Frazer. "It will not hold if there isn't progress on other fronts, those political and diplomatic."
He added that both sides assured him they would respect the cease-fire the first news that the army agreed.
France's Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband were to leave immediately for Congo and were expected to go to Goma as well as the Congo capital, Kinshasa.
Ross Mountain, the UN's deputy representative and humanitarian coordinator in Congo, said more than 1 million people have been now displaced. "This is extraordinary," he said. "A million (displaced) in a province of 6 million."
Associated Press reporters followed the flood of misery, past bodies of several soldiers on the outskirts of the besieged capital. Women whose faces streamed with sweat carried bundles of belongings on their backs and toddlers on their necks.
"We've had nothing to eat for three days," Rhema Harerimana, who has been on the run for five days, told the AP. She was heading home Friday to Kibumba, about 17 miles (28 kilometers) from Goma.
"There's no shelter, there's no food," she said. "My only choice is to go home."
Nkunda's rebellion has threatened to reignite the back-to-back wars that afflicted Congo from 1996 to 2002, drawing in eight African nations. President Joseph Kabila, elected in 2006 in the first vote in 40 years, has struggled ever since to contain the bloody insurgency in the east.
Nkunda, who said Thursday that he wanted direct talks with the Congo government, began a low-level rebellion in 2004, claiming Congo's transition to democracy had excluded the Tutsi ethnic group. Despite agreeing in January to a UN-brokered cease-fire, he resumed fighting in August.
Congo has charged Nkunda himself with involvement in war crimes, and Human Rights Watch says it has documented summary executions, torture, and rape committed by soldiers under Nkunda's command in 2002 and 2004.
Rights groups have also accused government forces of atrocities and widespread looting.
The international envoys are coming to Goma to try to help solve the problem. A main aim of the diplomatic efforts is to get Kabila and Rwandan President Paul Kagame to sit down together and sort out the issues at the root of the conflict.
The peacekeepers put on an unusual show of force for Frazer and Doss' arrival Friday, with at least four tanks deployed around the city, armored cars on patrol as well as UN troops with riot shields patrolling on foot.
The cease-fire Nkunda called on Wednesday night appeared to be holding Friday.
A team from International Medical Corps trying to reach a clinic in Kibumba was stopped by a rebel guard who said he needed permission from higher-up to let them pass. Hours later, the team was still waiting.
Nearby, rebels refused to allow a group of about 20 drivers of motorbike taxis to return home to Goma.
"Those new soldiers have blocked us from returning," said driver Ruwara Nuyubuzu, referring to the rebels manning a checkpoint. "We want to go home."
In Kibumba, soldiers had looted homes and the bank, said village chief Gatambaza Kariwabo.
The United Nations has only 6,000 of its 17,000 Congo peacekeepers in the east because of unrest in other provinces. It says the force is badly overstretched, but European nations have been sharply divided over whether to send troops to Congo.
The European Union's security committee decided Friday against a possible deployment to Congo, and EU officials said the 27-member bloc will instead focus its attention on diplomatic and political means to end the conflict.
