Rwanda says war crimes suspect surrenders at U.S. Embassy

Indicted war criminal Bosco Ntaganda poses for a photograph during an interview with Reuters in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, October 5, 2010.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Rwandan-born former Congolese general Bosco Ntaganda, wanted by the International Criminal Court for suspected war crimes in Congo, has given himself up at the U.S. Embassy in Kigali, Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo said on Monday.

"We have learned today that Bosco Ntaganda entered Rwanda and surrendered to (the) U.S. Embassy in Kigali," she posted on Twitter.

There was no immediate confirmation from U.S. officials. An official at the U.S. Embassy in Kigali said she was not aware of Ntaganda surrendering.

Ntaganda faces charges of conscripting child soldiers, murder, ethnic persecution and rape in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Neither Rwanda nor the United States has an obligation to hand Ntaganda over to The Hague-based ICC since they are not parties to the Rome Statute that established the court.

A year-long insurgency in a resource-rich Congolese province by M23 rebels was partly triggered by President Joseph Kabila's plan to arrest Ntaganda on the international charges. Ntaganda was integrated into the Congolese army with insurgents as part of a 2009 peace deal.

The ICC has been seeking Ntaganda's arrest since 2006, but Kabila resisted acting on the warrant until April last year, saying Ntaganda was a linchpin in the fragile peace.

(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau and Michelle Nichols; Editing by Bill Trott)