By Joe Bavier KINSHASA, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Democratic Republic of Congo's Tutsi rebellion has called for Germany to mediate peace talks to end more than a decade of fighting in the country's eastern borderlands, a rebel representative said on Thursday. Renegade Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda's rebel movement signed a peace deal with the Congolese government in January, along with around a dozen other armed groups from violence-ravaged North and South Kivu provinces. However, the process was plagued by daily ceasefire violations and repeated walkouts by rebels and militia groups, before heavy fighting again erupted three weeks ago. "We want to meet with the government directly, either in Germany or in another country with German mediators," Jean-Desire Muiti, a top political adviser to Nkunda, told Reuters on Thursday. "We no longer believe in the (peace) process. For a year now they've done nothing." The rebels accuse Congo's U.N. peacekeeping mission, MONUC, and EU and U.S. mediators of siding with the government against them. Germany has played little part in the mediation thus far, but has supported development programmes in North and South Kivu which Muiti said had influenced the rebel group's decision. An official at Germany's embassy in Kinshasa said the mission had received no direct request to mediate in the Kivus, where heavy fighting continued on Thursday between Nkunda's rebels and pro-government militia in Masisi territory, northwest of North Kivu's capital, Goma. Congo's President Joseph Kabila on Wednesday accepted a U.N. plan to allow peacekeepers to disengage the army and Nkunda's fighters from advanced positions and establish buffer zones in contested zones. The United Nations, European Union and United States have all called upon both government forces and Nkunda to respect the January ceasefire and rejoin the peace process, known as the Amani process. "We just completed the disengagement plan. It has been approved by the government. In the coming days, it will be presented to all the armed groups," MONUC spokeswoman Sylvie Van Den Wildenberg told Reuters. "The plan now is to get Amani back on track." Over 850,000 people have been forced from their homes by fighting in North Kivu since late 2006, in one of the world's worst conflict-driven humanitarian disasters. An estimated 5.4 million people have been killed since Congo's war began. (Editing by Alistair Thomson)
Democratic Republic of Congo supporters mob Egypt's soccer team bus to intimidate the players after their training session in Kinshasa September 6, 2008. The two countries are playing against each other ...
