The Rwandan military is commanding and supporting the rebel force
that overtook a major city in eastern Congo this week, a United Nations
report released Wednesday said.
The highly anticipated report
said, "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."
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 U.N. 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 U.N. accuses the M23 of grave crimes including recruiting child soldiers, summary executions and rape.
The
U.N. 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 cooperated 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."
The M23 is made up of hundreds of officers who deserted the Congo army in April this year.
Earlier
Wednesday, the U.N.'s special representative for Congo said the
19,000-strong U.N. 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.
U.N. 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 U.N. 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,
which clearly came from some outside party.
He did not name Rwanda or Uganda.
Rwanda
has been elected by the U.N. General Assembly to serve a two-year
position on the 15-member Security Council beginning in January, which
will complicate efforts by the council to come to grips with the
country's intervention in neighboring Congo.