Congo rebels withdraw from town on Uganda border

GOMA, Congo (Reuters) - Congolese rebels have withdrawn from an eastern border town they captured last week after a U.N. envoy told their leader they were not respecting a ceasefire, the rebels and the U.N. said on Monday.

U.N. peacekeepers said Tutsi rebels loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda had pulled back from Ishasha, on Democratic Republic of Congo's eastern frontier with Uganda.

The rebels had seized the town on Thursday, sending thousands of refugees fleeing over the border in the latest upsurge of conflict in Congo's eastern North Kivu province.

"We have decided to withdraw from Ishasha because when we secured it at the weekend everyone said we had breached the ceasefire," Bertrand Bisimwa, spokesman for Nkunda's rebel National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), said.

He told Reuters the rebel pullback from Ishasha was intended as "a sign of goodwill."

It followed a meeting on Saturday between Nkunda and a U.N. special envoy, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who criticized the rebels for advancing and seizing territory despite a ceasefire Nkunda himself had declared.

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(Reporting by Frank Nyakairu in Kigali and Joe Bavier in Kinshasa; Editing by Pascal Fletcher)