New York -- Joseph Kabila, President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, accused Rwanda of igniting new military clashes in eastern DRC in an attempt to clear resistance and continue to plunder. He said his government has isolated 3,000 Rwandan soldiers in Kamina in Katanga, and that a mission from MONUC, the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC, has been identifying these Rwandan combatants for the last few days.

"Paradoxically and with the contempt of the pressing requests of the international community through the relevant resolutions of the Security Council, Rwanda reinforces its military presence in Congo," Kabila said (he spoke in French; all quotes are translated to English).

Kabila made this accusation in his address to the high-level debate of the United Nations General Assembly Sunday morning, immediately following Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni on the podium. He began by pledging support for the global effort against terrorism, and then reminded the world of what he considered terrorism within his nation’s borders.

"The Congolese people are themselves innocent victims of the war of aggression of Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi," Kabila said. "This other form of terrorism is characterized by the acts of cruelty which have caused the death, directly or indirectly, of millions of Congolese."

While Kabila referred to the war of aggression of the Ugandans, Rwandans, and Burundians, he reserved his ire for the Rwandans and acknowledged that Ugandan and Burundian troops were withdrawing from the DRC.

Still, Uganda’s ambassador to the U.S. Edith Ssempala was displeased with Kabila’s speech. "It was disappointing that he was still talking about aggression," she told The Monitor. She would have liked to hear Kabila chart the way forward -- the peace process and the Inter-Congolese Dialogue -- instead of laying blame for past actions.

In his speech, Kabila did call for help from the international co mmunity in establishing free and fair presidential elections in the DRC. But Ssempala considered that to be jumping ahead of the existing challenges facing the Congo.

Kabila also reiterated his long-standing call for the UN to impose sanctions on "all the States which plunder the riches of the Democratic Republic of Congo and their accomplices," which, implicitly, would include Uganda.

Ambassador James Mugume, Director of International Cooperation in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told The Monitor Uganda is ahead of the troop withdrawal schedule set by the July 1999 Lusaka Agreement. He said Uganda has begun to withdraw its troops even though that step was not to be taken, according to the pact, until significant progress has been made in the Inter-Congolese Dialogue. Kabila’s government walked out of the Inter-Congolese Dialogue meeting in Addis Ababa in October, effectively killing the talks until their resumption, set for late this month in Pretoria, South Africa.

On Friday evening, after two meetings on the Congo war, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted resolution 1376 establishing Phase III of the Lusaka Agreement, including deployment of UN peacekeeping troops to eastern DRC and the demilitarization of Kisangani.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in an address to the council, called for an end to hostilities in eastern DRC without singling out Rwanda for blame. "First and foremost, the fighting in the east of the country must stop," he said. "No one should give any further support to the armed groups that continue to fight in the east, and no one should take any further aggressive action against them."