GOMA, Congo - Renewed fighting between rebels and government troops broke out in eastern Congo on Saturday, as a U.N. special envoy flew in for emergency talks to try to end a crisis that has displaced 250,000 people since August.
The envoy, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, met President Joseph Kabila in the capital Kinshasa, said U.N. mission spokesman Madnodje Mounoubai.
Obasanjo was due later Saturday in the eastern city of Goma, and will meet rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, Nkunda's spokesman Bertrand Bisimwa said. He said the meeting would likely take place Sunday in one of the rebel-held towns of Rutshuru, north of Goma, or Bunagana, on the Ugandan border.
Obasanjo was in Angola on Friday and told reporters there that Nkunda had asked for a face-to-face meeting during a telephone call the day before.
Nkunda says he is fighting to protect ethnic Tutsis from Hutu militias who fled to Congo after Rwanda's 1994 genocide. The mass slaughter left more than 500,000 dead, most of them Tutsis.
The army and rebels exchanged fire for about 10 minutes Saturday in Kabasha, a village around 110 kilometres north of Goma, said Col. Jean-Paul Dietrich, a spokesman for the 17,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force in Congo.
"It's not clear who started it," Dietrich said. "We have launched patrols in the area."
Bisimwa could not confirm the fighting, but said the area around Kanyabayonga, 15 kilometres to the west of Kabasha, was tense.
"There is a big movement of the government army from Kanyabayonga toward our positions," Bisimwa said. "They have tanks, helicopters, many things. They want to attack us."
The brief skirmish was the first reported since Tuesday, when the army and the rebels battled in a rare nighttime firefight near the town of Kibati that killed at least two government troops.
About 60,000 civilians are huddled in two massive camps at Kibati, about 12 kilometres north of Goma,
Worried about the refugee's safety and close proximity to the front lines, the U.N. refugee agency announced Friday it would move the displaced next week from Kibati to a new site at Mugunga, around six miles 10 kilometres to the west.
The move would be voluntary, though, and some camp residents said they intended to stay.
"It's better to stay here," said Willy Furaha, who fled skirmishes in his native Kibumba in late October. "If (rebels) come, we'll go to Goma."
Maombi Uwamariya, 27, said she would move with her four children because "there is fighting over there." She gestured toward the front line, about five kilometres away.
Others were ambivalent.
"Five kilometers from Mugunga are (the rebels)," said Claude Kalume Mwendapole, 41. "Five kilometers from here are the rebels. It's the same thing."
Speaking Friday, Obasanjo also said Angolan President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos assured him no Angolan troops were in Congo, despite numerous reports of Angolans helping Congolese forces.
Congo has called on Angola for help and some fear the crisis could draw in regional countries as it did during a devastating 1998-2002 war, which split the vast nation into rival fiefdoms and drew in half a dozen African armies, including Angola's.
