A woman carries a child and belongings as she flees fighting near the town of Sake in North Kivu province, eastern Congo, September 7, 2007.
REUTERS/James Akena
By Joe Bavier
GOMA, Congo, Sept 10 (Reuters) - Democratic Republic of Congo's army and a rebel Tutsi general maintained an uneasy ceasefire on Monday, but the absence of direct peace talks raised questions about how long the lull in fighting would last.
Both the government forces and fighters loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda said they were observing a de facto truce in eastern Congo's North Kivu province, which has seen heavy fighting in the last two weeks.
United Nations peacekeepers, who brokered and announced the ceasefire on Thursday, said they believed the opposing sides were using the truce to bolster their military positions.
"For the moment, we still have a cessation of hostilities. But it is still very tense. All of the parties to the conflict are reinforcing," Major Gabriel De Brosse, military spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo (MONUC), said.
The worsening fighting in North Kivu between Nkunda's Tutsi fighters and government troops had forced thousands of civilians to flee their homes.
It was a setback to efforts by President Joseph Kabila, who won landmark elections late last year, to achieve lasting peace across the former Belgian colony, scarred by a 1998-2003 war.
Nkunda, who first led a revolt in 2004 but signed a short-lived peace deal in January, says he is fighting to protect his Tutsi people in east Congo against attacks by Rwandan Hutu rebels he says are backed by Kabila's government.
At Sake, 20 km (12 miles) west of the North Kivu provincial capital Goma, government soldiers were patrolling just 50 meters (yards) from Nkunda's positions. Tanks and armoured vehicles from the 17,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo secured the town centre.
"We are in a kind of ceasefire. There is no fighting for the moment with the insurgents. We are not attacking," Colonel Delphin Kahimbi, the Congolese army's operations commander in North Kivu, told Reuters.
The army moved back into Sake on Sunday, after it was pushed back towards Goma by Nkunda's forces last week.
BUYING TIME
Analysts were sceptical that the ceasefire could hold for long without serious political talks between the two sides.
"MONUC pushed very hard for a ceasefire, but at a time when both Nkunda and the army needed to buy time to regroup in view of possible future confrontation. It wasn't accompanied by any political measures," Jason Stearns, an independent Congo expert, told Reuters by telephone from Nairobi.
"(The government has) said on numerous occasions they want to solve this militarily. This is going to go on for weeks and weeks," said Stearns, who previously worked for the International Crisis Group think-tank.
Nkunda, a gifted military commander whose fighters last month abandoned the mixed national army brigades they had joined as part of the January peace deal, has said he is ready to negotiate peace.
"What's next? We don't know. We're still waiting for the government," Nkunda's military commander, Bwambale Kakolele, told Reuters at the weekend at the rebel stronghold of Kichanga, 70 km (45 miles) north of Goma.
The North Kivu fighting has alarmed neighbouring governments in the Great Lakes region, a tinderbox of wars, ethnic conflicts and border disputes.
Uganda's army on Monday denied a report by Congo's U.N.-sponsored Radio Okapi which had said that Ugandan troops were massing on their border, despite a deal at the weekend meant to reduce tensions between the two nations. (Additional reporting by Francis Kwera in Kampala)
