...Says, "Hello,
my brothers." ...Says, "Hello,
my brothers." KINSHASA, Congo With its president at a peace summit, Congo was on a war footing Saturday - broadcasting accusations against neighboring Rwanda, enlisting fresh army recruits and detaining ethnic Tutsis on suspicion of treason.
Hundreds of unemployed men and women turned out at a Kinshasa military base to enlist in the army, vowing to crush the rebellion in eastern Congo and take the war to Rwanda.
President Laurent Kabila accused the Tutsi-led Rwandan government of masterminding the uprising in the Kivu region. Several key cities, including Goma and Bukavu, are already in the hands of rebel Tutsis.
Rwanda repeatedly has denied it was behind Congo's uprising and said Kabila was trying to divert attention from disenchantment with his government.
Kabila sat down Saturday in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, with his Rwandan adversary, President Pasteur Bizimungu, to try to find a peaceful end to growing hostilities. They were joined by five other regional leaders. But prospects for a solution emerging from the talks appeared dim.
On his return to the Rwandan capital Kigali, Bizimungu accused Kabila of trying to establish a pretext to attack Rwanda and threatened Congo with a pre-emptive strike.
"We will not wait for Congo to attack first," Bizimungu told The Associated Press.
The government has been repeatedly broadcasting statements by Kabila declaring there was no room to bargain with Rwanda.
The rebellious Rwandan soldiers and Congolese Tutsi fighters - called Banyamulenge - backed Kabila last year in his ouster of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, but they have since grown disaffected. Among other things, the fighters accuse Kabila of failing to contain Rwandan Hutu rebels launching cross-border attacks from inside Congo.
The Banyamulenge have close ethnic ties with the Tutsis, who now govern Rwanda.
"They want to create a Tutsi empire," Kabila said in another statement on state-controlled Voice of the People radio. "But are we Congolese prepared to accept the challenge of a toad which wants to swallow an elephant?"
The rebel Tutsi fighters announced a new set of targets in western Congo, pledging to push inland from their Atlantic coastline stronghold of Muanda to Boma, within 150 miles southwest of the capital.
Attacks by Hutu rebels and counterattacks by the army have killed more than 55 people in northwestern Rwanda, the Rwanda News Agency reported Saturday.
Rebels armed with guns, clubs and machetes killed 11 people and wounded
seven others in an attack near the border town of Gisenyi, 60 miles northwest
of Kigali, the private news agency said, quoting army sources. The attacks
apparently were aimed at punishing the majority Hutu population for refusing
to provide rebels with food, shelter and money.
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