Turning a new and bloody page in Congo’s tragic history, the increasingly muscular M23 rebel group said Wednesday that after taking the main eastern city of Goma, it was prepared to capture the capital of Kinshasa and overthrow the government in a military coup.

“We will go to Kinshasa, we will unite the country,” the group’s military spokesman Col. Vianney Kazarama told a cheering crowd of civilians, police and government soldiers in Goma just one day after UN peacekeepers held their fire and watched the city fall, and Congolese troops fled for their lives.

Kazarama later softened his stand, according to the Guardian, saying that the rebels would take the capital “if people invite us. We obey the people.”

But the rebels’ recruitment efforts were in overdrive, and by the end of the day, starving, scantily paid Congolese government troops had swelled M23 ranks by nearly 3,000 defecting soldiers.

Rwanda is a mainstay of the rebels’ success, said a damning UN report tabled Wednesday. Written by a group of experts, it exhaustively documents how the thousands-strong M23 militia morphed from a small band of Congolese army defectors just eight months ago, to a sophisticated, well-armed and virtually unstoppable force that dominates Africa’s Great Lakes region.

The report said Rwanda had violated an arms embargo “by providing direct military support to the M23 rebels, facilitating recruitment, encouraging and facilitating desertions from the armed forces of (Congo) and providing arms, ammunition, intelligence and political advice.”

And in the most serious allegations of Rwandan involvement yet, it said that the “de facto chain of command” for the rebels “culminates with the Minister of Defence of Rwanda, Gen. James Kabarebe.”

Rwandan recruits were escorted to the Congolese border by government troops, which “confiscated their telephones, burned their identity cards and instructed them to claim to be Congolese in the event of capture,” the report said. Documented with copious evidence — including eyewitness reports and images implicating Rwandan officials in the M23 militia operations — it said the rebels had received regular deliveries of weapons to their headquarters from Rwanda every two weeks, building an arsenal that outstrips that of Congo’s government.

The Rwandan government strongly denies the report’s allegations, claiming the experts were biased and information inaccurate.

A UN official told the Associated Press that Rwanda had effectively “annexed” eastern Congo by sponsoring rebel incursions.

M23’s growing ambitions heap new threats on a country that has lost some 5 million people in persistent civil wars. Armed groups from neighbouring countries have rampaged over Congo’s borders, settling old scores and fighting to capture new mineral wealth that potentially awards the victors billions of dollars. Savage attacks on women earned it the title of “rape capital of the world.”

Conflict ignited after the 1994 Rwandan genocide led by the ethnic Hutu regime, when more than two million Hutus fled over its border, including those responsible for the genocide. With the complicity of the Congolese government they attacked its ethnic Tutsis. Rwanda sent its own militias, aided by Uganda, to overthrow the Congolese government.

But the Hutu militias remained, and Rwanda backed another coup against then-president Laurent Kabila, who called on five neighbouring countries for help, sparking a massive war in Congo. Trouble flared again in 2008, but a peace deal was eventually forged between Rwanda and Congo and a UN peacekeeping force installed. The current rebellion was launched eight months ago by mutinous troops accusing the government of failing to stick to the deal.

As well as Rwanda, the report also pointed a finger at neighbouring Uganda, which it said was working against the Congolese government, with senior Ugandan officials providing “direct troop reinforcements in Congolese territory, weapons deliveries, technical assistance, joint planning, political advice.”

There has been little respite for Congo’s traumatized civilians. Since the rebellion began, brutal attacks have increased, as M23 tried to form coalitions with local groups in the Kivu region. Hundreds of Congolese Hutus have been killed, and more than 800 homes burned. About 60,000 civilians have been displaced.

Recruitment of child soldiers has also escalated under M23 commanders notorious for forcing children to fight, and numerous women have been raped.

The report said that some commanders “ordered the extrajudicial executions of dozens of recruits and prisoners of war.”

The struggle for territory in mineral-rich Congo is a prime motive of the wars and rebellions that have plagued the country. “Smuggling into both Burundi and Rwanda is on the rise,” the report said, adding that the mineral-tagging system meant to stop the practice is jeopardized by “laundering of Congolese minerals” by mining co-operatives.

“Several traders have contributed to financing M23 rebels using profits resulting from the smuggling of Congolese minerals into Rwanda,” the report said. Gold, which fetches huge prices on the world market, is also smuggled out of the country, sold for millions of U.S. dollars.

With files from Star wire services

A United Nations report released Wednesday says the Rwandan military is commanding and supporting the rebel force that overtook a major city in eastern Congo this week.

UN troops prove useless

The highly anticipated report says, “The government of Rwanda continues to violate the arms embargo by providing direct military support to the M23 rebels, facilitating recruitment, encouraging and facilitating desertions from the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and providing arms, ammunition, intelligence and political advice.”

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The report also says, “The de facto chain of command of M23 includes Gen. Bosco Ntaganda and culminates with the Minister of Defence of Rwanda, Gen. James Kabarebe.”

The report also accuses Uganda of involvement. Uganda has said it would pull its troops out of UN peacekeeping operations if it was named in the report.

Both Rwanda and Uganda have denied supporting the M23 rebel movement, which took the city of Goma, which has a population of more than 1 million, on Tuesday.

Thousands of Congolese soldiers and policemen defected to the M23 rebels Wednesday as rebel leaders vowed to take control of all Congo, including the capital, Kinshasa.

The UN accuses the M23 of grave crimes including recruiting child soldiers, summary executions and rape.

The UN report says, “Senior officials of the Government of Uganda have also provided support to M23 in the form of direct troop reinforcements in Congolese territory, weapons deliveries, technical assistance, joint planning, political advice and facilitation of external relations.”

The report adds, “Both Governments have also co-operated to support the creation and expansion of the political branch of M23 and have consistently advocated on behalf of the rebels. M23 and its allies include six sanctioned individuals, some of whom reside in or regularly travel to Rwanda and Uganda.”

Earlier Wednesday, the UN’s special representative for Congo said the 19,000-strong UN peacekeeping force there is being stretched thin by multiple rebel militias in the eastern part of the country, including Goma.

Roger Meece made the assessment in a live videoconference linkup to the Security Council from Kinshasa.

The council is assessing the performance of the MONUSCO peacekeeping force after 1,500 of its troops stood by Tuesday and let M23 rebels take Goma without resistance.

UN helicopters over the weekend fired hundreds of rockets at the rebels in a bid to slow their advance on the city of 1 million.

But U.N. officials say the UN force commander in Goma ordered the peacekeepers not to shoot Tuesday in order to avoid provoking a major firefight in the city after Congolese troops retreated.

Meece said the M23 rebels were “well provisioned,” uniformed and supplied with weapons, including night-vision goggles, that clearly came from some outside party.

He did not name Rwanda or Uganda.

On the Web: www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol(equals)S/2012/843

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