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Congo army says retakes eastern town from rebels
By Joe Bavier
GOMA, Congo (Reuters) - Democratic Republic of Congo's army said it retook a strategic town on Wednesday from rebels loyal to renegade Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda in the violence-torn eastern province of North Kivu.
Government forces bombarded rebel positions around Mushake, about 40 km (25 miles) west of the provincial capital Goma, with attack helicopters, rockets and artillery for three days before ground troops occupied the town.
"We are in Mushake. It is under the control of the army. We've occupied it since this morning," General Vainqueur Mayala, the army's top commander in North Kivu, told Reuters.
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Congo's army announced the recapture of Mushake as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held talks in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa with regional African leaders on efforts to end the conflict in east Congo.
Rice, the presidents of Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi and Congo's interior minister reiterated their commitment to try to secure peace for the conflict-racked area, where fighting has persisted despite the end of a 1998-2003 war.
Congolese president Joseph Kabila, who has vowed to pacify North Kivu since winning national elections last year, did not attend the Addis Ababa talks and was giving a speech to the national assembly in Kinshasa, officials said.
Mushake lies on one of the main roads leading out of Goma. Nkunda's fighters held the town for several months, limiting access by humanitarian agencies, and cutting the army's supply lines to government brigades in the west of the province.
The army launched its latest offensive against Nkunda loyalists on Monday, overrunning a number of rebel-held areas and forcing the insurgents from hilltop positions overlooking the town, which has fallen to Nkunda twice in a year.
Nkunda first led 4,000 soldiers into the bush in 2004, claiming he was protecting east Congo's Tutsi ethnic minority.
DOUBTS OVER ARMY
Mushake has been an important base for his fighters since they abandoned a Rwandan-brokered peace deal in late August and quit special mixed army brigades formed in early 2007.
But analysts question whether the Congolese government army, which has a reputation for poor discipline and recurrent rights abuses, can really deal a knock-out blow to Nkunda, who is demanding security guarantees for the Tutsis in Congo.
"A military victory is not a matter of taking a couple of towns. This is guerrilla warfare. It's a matter of inflicting sustained damage. We haven't seen anything like that," said Jason Stearns, an independent Congo analyst based in Nairobi.
"It seems like they (the army) are pouring a lot into just a few towns that Nkunda can easily abandon to cut his losses," he added.
The vast former Belgian colony held its first democratic elections in more than four decades last year, won by Kabila. The polls were meant to draw a line under the 1998-2003 war.
More than 400,000 people have fled fighting in North Kivu between government soldiers, Nkunda's insurgents, Rwandan Hutu rebels, and local Mai Mai militia over the past year.
(Editing by Nick Tattersall and Pascal Fletcher)
