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Action lacking as deadline on Congo rebels passes

By David Lewis
KINSHASA, Sept 30 (Reuters) - A deadline for Rwandan and Ugandan rebels to leave Congo expires on Friday, but thousands remain and threats to drive them out are empty since there is no miltary force capable of doing so, diplomats say.

Despite the midnight Friday deadline agreed in August by Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Rwanda, very few of the foreign rebels have returned home, ignoring a barrage of appeals and threats from all three governments and the United Nations.

Rekindling fears of another flare-up in an area that is already a regional tinderbox, a heavily-armed, 400-strong contingent of Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels crossed into a remote corner of the eastern Congo in September.

The group, remnants of a rebel movement which has devastated northern Uganda and is accused of massacring civilians and mutilating victims, is refusing to disarm. This poses a new headache for Congo's overstretched U.N. peacekeepers.

"That whole area is very complicated -- boundaries are porous, there is a history of armed militias," said Ibrahim Gambari, U.N. under secretary general for political affairs.

"To disarm them all will require an enormous peacekeeping force, which the U.N. doesn't have, and which member states are not willing to fund," he told reporters in Nairobi.

The U.N.'s nearly 17,000 soldiers in Congo are the world body's largest peacekeeping mission. But it is spread across a country the size of Western Europe where bands of gunmen are still preying on civilians as the U.N. struggles to help organise the first democratic elections in over 40 years.

"We shouldn't be establishing deadlines when we don't have the capability to enforce them ... It's laughable," a Kinshasa-based diplomat, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.

"How will travel bans and asset freezes in Europe and the U.S. affect people fighting in the jungle?" he added, referring to threatened international sanctions against rebel leaders.

LIMITED OPTIONS

Citing the presence of rebels opposing their governments, Rwanda and Uganda have invaded the vast and chaotic neighbouring Congo twice during the last decade, sparking two wars. They have subsequently withdrawn under peace deals including promises the rebels would be dealt with.

Friday's deadline was mainly aimed at an estimated 10,000 Rwandan Hutu rebels who have been in Congo since the 1994 Rwandan genocide but it also applied to just over one thousand Ugandan rebels.

This week, Uganda threatened to send its army back into Congo to disarm the rebels if Kinshasa's fledgling army or U.N. peacekeepers failed to do so. Rwanda has made similar warnings.

"The military options are limited -- they can put out as many ultimatums as they want but these cannot be backed up on the ground," Henri Boshoff, an analyst at the Johannesburg-cased Institute for Security Studies, told Reuters.

"The African Union has said it will disarm the Rwandans, but does not have the capacity. There is only one Congolese brigade that is functional -- the others lack equipment and logistics to do anything. The U.N. could do it ... but they are stretched already," he said.

U.N. military spokesman Lt Col Thierry Provendier said in Kinshasa U.N. forces were ready to support the Congolese army to try to expel the foreign fighters.

"But for now, our priorities are protecting the population and securing the elections," he added.

Kinshasa's transitional government, formed after Congo's last five-year war, is deeply divided and struggling to integrate tens of thousands of fighters from various factions into a national army.

"We are trying to rebuild our army to protect the Congo, not resolve our neighbours' problems," said government spokesman Henri Mova Sakanyi.