Tristan McConnell
General Laurent Nkunda is a contradiction. An urbane jungle-dweller; an evangelical Christian warlord; a cerebral military strategist who unleashes awful brutality; a tribal protector and father of six who recruits children into his ranks; a patriot who wages war and steals the resources of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
As ever, General Nkunda, 41, has been justifying his assaults by saying that he must protect minority ethnic Tutsis. This week his 4,000 well-trained, disciplined troops marched from their mountain strongholds past the volcanoes and villages of North Kivu before stopping a few miles from Goma, a dusty provincial town bloated with refugees. The national army fled in disarray and UN peacekeepers failed to halt his advance.
Tall and slim, General Nkunda sometimes dresses in smartly pressed camouflage fatigues with a beret and a gold-topped cane, at other times in warlord chic with dark sunglasses, cowboy hat and a badge emblazoned with the slogan "Rebels for Christ".
He studied psychology before joining the rebel army of Paul Kagame, now the President of Rwanda, in 1993. Their close relationship endures, and many accuse Rwanda of backing General Nkunda's rebellion. Mr Kagame denies this - but he has the influence to rein in the general if he chooses to, and it is clear that Rwandan businessmen and politicians benefit from the general's control of a swath of the country.
In 1994 General Nkunda and Mr Kagame, fellow Tutsis, fought alongside each other to push the Hutu tribal militias responsible for Rwanda's genocide out of the country and into what was then neighbouring Zaire, which became Congo in 1997.
In the ensuing war General Nkunda became a senior rebel officer, helping to topple Zaire's President, Mobutu Sese Seko. As Rwanda, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Angola all joined in the fight and stripped the country of its resources - from gold and tin to cows and bushmeat - General Nkunda's reputation for ruthlessness grew.
In 2002 he brutally suppressed a mutiny in Kisangani, a key trading town formerly known as Stanleyville that sits on a broad bend in the Congo River. More than 160 people were executed, some bound and flung off a bridge into the river, earning him the nickname "The Butcher of Kisangani".
A 2003 peace deal intended to end the war - which had already claimed three million lives - gave him the rank of general in the national army but the agreement failed to end the fighting. Millions have died from disease or starvation, hundreds of thousands have been raped, and tens of thousands of children have been recruited to fight.
General Nkunda refused to report to the capital, Kinshasa, blaming the Government for failing to disarm the remaining Hutu militias in the east of the country. In June 2004 his troops besieged and then overran the once-beautiful town of Bukavu on the southern shore of Lake Kivu. Declaring that he had to protect the town's Tutsi population from ethnic attacks, his troops launched their own pogrom, raping women and children, murdering civilians and looting homes and shops.
For these crimes an arrest warrant was issued in 2005 but despite the presence in the region of 17,000 UN troops, General Nkunda has for years run a chunk of North Kivu as a private fiefdom from his mountain stronghold in Rutshuru. In person he is softly spoken and switches easily between English, French, Swahili and Kinyarwanda. He has a tendency to refer to himself in the third person and says he admires Mahatma Gandhi and President Bush. For now General Nkunda has ordered his forces not to enter Goma but if he changes his mind there is little to stop them. Everyone knows what happened in Bukavu; Goma's civilian residents are rightly terrified.
Britain and France call for urgent action on Congo
Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced by the violence in Congo
Philippe Naughton
Britain and France today called for urgent international action to prevent a humanitarian disaster in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo.
In a joint statement to mark the end of their two-day visit to the region, David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, and his French counterpart Bernard Kouchner said there was "no excuse for turning away".
Gordon Brown, meanwhile, expressed concern that the Congo could be lurching towards a repeat of the 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda in which up to a million people were killed. "I am very concerned by the situation in the Congo," he told reporters during his tour of the Gulf states. "Thousands have been displaced. We must not allow Congo to become another Rwanda."
But despite the strong words, there was no call from either Britain or France to send European troops to the region to bolster the beleaguered United Nations peacekeeping force.
The Foreign Office minister Lord Malloch-Brown disclosed that contingency plans were being prepared for the deployment of a European Union force, including a British contingent. However, with UK forces already stretched fighting on two fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq, Mr Miliband was quick to pour cold water on the suggestion that British troops could soon be caught up in a new overseas entanglement.
Meanwhile, aid agencies warned that the situation on the ground was deteriorating as tens of thousands fled to escape the fighting and the threat of rape and murder by the various armed groups across the eastern Congo.
"The humanitarian situation here is completely out of control," said Alpha Sankoh, ActionAid's country director in the Congo. "Refugees are being targeted before our very eyes - we cannot allow this to continue. The protection of women and children is paramount - particularly as so many are on the move seeking safety."
In their statement, Mr Miliband and Mr Kouchner called for a strengthening of the current ceasefire around the eastern city of Goma and the opening of secure routes for the delivery of humanitarian aid. "There is no excuse for turning away," they said. "The international community must support humanitarian delivery, strengthen the United Nations force, and help promote and enforce agreements."
The ministers called on the Congolese government to take "proper command" of its forces while establishing channels of communication with all communities within the country. At the same time, they said that the Rwandan government needed to take "active steps" to help end the crisis.
The current conflict in the Congo has is roots in the genocide 14 years ago in neighbouring Rwanda where up to a million people were killed when Hutu extremists turned on their Tutsi neighbours. Some 250,000 people are thought have fled their homes in recent weeks since the breakdown of a UN-brokered ceasefire in the region.
The rebel leader, General Laurent Nkunda, has said that he returned to arms in order to protect his Tutsi community from Rwandan Hutus who fled to the Congo after carrying out the genocide of 1994.
However, his own forces - which are now poised on the outskirts of the regional capital Goma, after Congolese government troops fled in the face of their advance - have also acquired a reputation for murder, rape and looting.
The Rwandans have been accused of supporting General Nkunda - a claim they deny - while the rebels in turn accuse the Congolese government of backing the Hutu militias.
During their visit, Mr Miliband and Mr Kouchner held talks with both Congolese president Joseph Kabila and Rwanda's president Paul Kagame in an effort to persuade them to use their influence to bring the fighting to an end.
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