Kabila attends Congo talks, rules out Nkunda meeting
(Updates with Kabila ruling out Nkunda invite)
By Lubunga Bya'Ombe
GOMA, Congo, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Congolese President Joseph Kabila flew to eastern Congo on Tuesday to throw his support behind a peace conference but ruled out inviting the leader of a group of Tutsi rebel fighters for direct talks.
"I am coming in order to personally involve myself in the search for a solution," Kabila told Reuters as he flew from Kinshasa to Goma, the capital of Democratic Republic of Congo's violence-torn North Kivu province.
Renegade General Laurent Nkunda, whose Tutsi rebels have battled government forces and ethnic militias in the east, said he would meet Kabila face-to-face if he was invited, raising hopes of a breakthrough in the long-running conflict.
"A meeting with the head of state would be a good thing ... When people talk to each other from a distance, they distrust each other. When they talk up close they tell each other things," he told Reuters, speaking by telephone from his mountain stronghold in eastern Congo.
But Kabila promptly rejected any such meeting with Nkunda, who the government maintains is the target of an arrest warrant for war crimes allegedly committed during a brief occupation of the eastern city of Bukavu.
"No one is going to invite Nkunda here, because he has problems with the law," Kabila told Reuters.
Individuals with known indictments or convictions for war crimes are excluded from participation in the peace talks, which opened more than a week ago but have been plagued by delays and threatened boycotts.
The government has transferred a Congolese warrant for Nkunda to the international police organisation Interpol.
TIME FOR TALKS
Congo's broader 1998-2003 war officially ended with a national peace settlement, but government soldiers, Nkunda's Tutsi insurgents, local Mai Mai militia, and Rwandan Hutu rebels have continued to fight each other in North Kivu.
The new head of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Congo, Alan Doss, told delegates on Tuesday that the fighting must end if Congo's east is to once and for all draw a line under a conflict that killed an estimated 4 million people.
"The violence in the Kivus has not stopped, whereas the rest of Congo benefits from a consolidation of the peace and is beginning the enormous work of reconstruction," he said.
Doss flew to Goma on Tuesday, along with senior U.N. officials and military commanders. The United Nations maintains around 17,000 peacekeepers in Congo.
"It is high time that you sit down around a table to discuss with frankness and serenity all these problems and together seek ideal and lasting solutions," he said.
Kabila, who has vowed to pacify Congo's turbulent east after winning elections last year in the former Belgian colony, convened the Goma peace conference after a government military offensive against Nkunda's fighters crumbled last month.
Nkunda's representatives have called for direct talks with the government and the return of all Congolese living in exile, including Kabila's arch-rival and defeated presidential contender Jean-Pierre Bemba.
Nkunda led around 4,000 fighters into the bush in a 2004 revolt and says his insurgency is trying to protect eastern Congo's Tutsi ethnic minority against attacks from Rwandan Hutu rebels who also operate in the east.
Kabila's government signed a deal with Rwanda in November to expel the Hutu rebels, involved in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda when some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered. (Additional reporting and writing by Joe Bavier in Kinshasa; Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Giles Elgood)
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