A move to oust Nkunda was launched on Monday by chief of staff Bosco
Ntaganda, but their relative positions remained unchanged ahead of
Wednesday's emergency meeting of the rebels' high command.
Ntaganda signed a statement that Nkunda had been dismissed as leader Save
of the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) for "poor
leadership" and "bad governance". The CNDP later denied that.
UN peacekeepers were alerted to the possibility of clashes between
rival rebel factions, but no fighting was reported after apparent
efforts to lower tensions inside the rebel camp.
"There's little chance it will degenerate," said Stewart Scott,
Nkunda's biographer. "The situation seems to have settled. Everyone now
wants to calm things down."
Ntaganda was accused of "high treason" for his affront to Nkunda,
but despite this he remains the rebel chief of staff, the CNDP
spokesman said Wednesday ahead of the meeting of the rebel high
command.
"We have to examine the question, the implications, the
circumstances which have caused the chief of staff to take such a
position," said Lieutenant-Colonel Seraphin Mirindi.
The rebels' woes were being regarded with a mixture of suspicion and
derision by the government in Kinshasa.
"If this malaise can change the nature of this armed movement into a
political party, that would be significant," government spokesman
Lambert Mende said.
"But if it's a manoeuvre to create a diversion, it will fail," he
said, adding that it mattered little to Kinshasa who was leader.
"We are not fighting the CNDP because it is being led by Nkunda, but
because it violates the laws of the republic, is killing populations
and has caused the exodus of thousands of displaced people," said
Mende.
On Tuesday, Ntaganda consulted with officers loyal to him at his
headquarters in the Masisi region east of the Nord-Kivu capital Goma.
Nkunda was expected to chair Wednesday's delayed meeting of the high
command in Rutshuru, north of Goma, to discuss the general's fate.
Nicknamed "The Terminator", Ntaganda had a previous scrape with
Nkunda last October, when his signature appeared on a statement
announcing that the rebel leader had died from a heart attack.
The authors of the statement remain unidentified, and Ntaganda was
untouched. But this time, there seems little doubt about his open
defiance of Nkunda, who founded the CNDP in 2006.
The general has become a focal point for internal opposition to
Nkunda, an ethnic Tutsi.
Ntaganda, a hardliner, has the support of the Bagogwe Tutsi clan
from the mountainous Masisi region, who have tired of the dominance of
Nkunda's Rutshuru-based Tutsis in the rebel leadership.
His move against Nkunda may have several motives, according to a UN
source: including a military distrust of the increasing role of
civilians in the CNDP leadership, and hostility to a strategy of
greater openness toward rival Hutus.
But according to a rebel officer who declined to be named, it could
also be sparked by anger over the blame being apportioned to Ntaganda,
even by members of the CNDP itself, for the massacre of more than 150
civilians in a rebel attack on the town of Kiwanja north of Goma in
November.
Ntaganda is already facing indictment by the International Criminal
Court over his recruitment of child soldiers in northeastern Ituri
province in 2002-2003,
Furthermore, Ntaganda has apparently never hidden his resentment
over Nkunda's decision to halt last autumn's rebel offensive within a
few kilometres of its greatest prize, the city of Goma on the shores of
Lake Kivu, after government forces had fled in panic.
The rebels remain on the outskirts of Goma after the offensive which
steam-rolled through a large swathe of government-held territory in
eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, which displaced more than 250,000
people.
Peacekeepers from the UN Mission in DR Congo (MONUC) have since
bolstered defences in the city along with a restructured government
force.
