Congo Says No Talks With Nkunda Outside Peace Pact

`No one is going to be negotiating outside the Amani framework,` Mende added. Amani means `peace` in Swahili.

Congo's government ruled out direct talks with Tutsi rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, saying on Tuesday any meeting was "impossible" outside the framework of a January peace deal the rebels have already rejected.

Nkunda's month-long campaign against chaotic government forces in the eastern province of North Kivu has displaced 250,000 people and prompted the U.N. Security Council to send 3,000 more troops to its biggest peace force.

"We agree to negotiate with Nkunda, within the Amani framework," Democratic Republic of Congo's Information Minister Lambert Mende told Reuters, referring to a January peace pact signed by Nkunda which he has since repudiated as one-sided.

"No one is going to be negotiating outside the Amani framework," Mende added. Amani means "peace" in Swahili.

"After 2006 (elections), the Congolese people drew a red line. To come to power, you must now do so through elections. We can accept demands, but not those that attempt to undermine constitutional order," Mende said.

U.N. mediator Olusegun Obasanjo, a former Nigerian president, urged Congolese President Joseph Kabila on Monday to talk to Nkunda, whom Obasanjo met on Nov. 16.

Obasanjo said on Monday the rebel leader had presented three main demands: direct talks with the government, protection of minorities, and integration of his soldiers and administrators in rebel-held areas into the Congolese army and government.

The U.N. mediator said Nkunda's demands were not outrageous.

"We're moving backwards. The government must listen to reason. We reject the Amani process, because it is not neutral," Bertrand Bisimwe, spokesman for Nkunda's rebellion, said.

MURDER AND TORTURE

Nkunda's fighters withdrew from frontline positions in North Kivu last week, while holding some towns, and a shaky ceasefire appears to be holding as Obasanjo tries to arrange peace talks.

In a report made public on Monday, the United Nations said both sides in the conflict had committed serious rights abuses including mass killings, rape and torture.

Kabila, who has for weeks lobbied central and southern African neighbours for political and military support for his elected government, was dealt a further blow by a report released on Tuesday by New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) accusing him of systematic repression.

In the two years since historic 2006 polls, the rights group accused the government of some 500 politically motivated killings, 1000 illegal arrests, and the widespread use of torture as a means of crushing political opposition.

"Diplomats and donors must put pressure on the Congolese government to put an end to this brutal repression," HRW Congo researcher Anneke Van Woudenberg told Reuters.

The report said Kabila himself set the "tone and direction" of the clampdown, giving orders to "crush" and "neutralise" the "enemies of democracy", "terrorists", and "savages."

"We have been informed of the accusation against our president, and we are very disappointed," Mende told Reuters.

"Where are these 500 dead? Where are the lists? ... We don't feel that we used disproportionate force," he said.

Coming at such a sensitive time, the accusations in the U.N. and HRW reports risk damaging Kabila's standing among foreign partners and the U.N. Security Council, which last week approved approved 3,000 more troops for its 17,000-strong Congo mission.

"If this is true, at the very least it warrants further scrutiny. I think it will at least push people to pause and reassess their relationships in light of the seriousness of these reports," one Western diplomat told Reuters of the report.