NAIROBI, Nov 7: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned on Friday at a summit of African leaders that the crisis in Democratic Republic of Congo could engulf the region.

Speaking to seven African leaders meeting in Kenya, Mr Ban said they must use their influence to make rebel leader Laurent Nkunda end his offensives in eastern Congo and curb any support that allows him to carry on fighting.

Fighting between Nkunda’s Tutsi rebels and Congolese forces has spread along the hilly, mineral-producing border region with Rwanda, uprooting hundreds of thousands of people and creating international alarm.

“This crisis could engulf the broader sub-region,” Ban told the leaders in Kenya.

“It is only at the political level, here in your region, that lasting solutions can be found. There can be no military solution to this crisis,” he said.

Underlining the fragility of the situation, Nkunda’s forces and government troops fought near a refugee camp in east Congo on Friday, forcing thousands of civilians to flee in panic.

Congolese and UN military officers said the two sides exchanged machinegun, mortar and rocket-propelled grenade fire near Kibati in Congo’s North Kivu province, where 250,000 people have fled recent fighting.

One of the key issues the leaders need to resolve for a lasting solution to the festering conflict is the presence in eastern Congo of Rwandan Hutu rebels, known as the FDLR, who took part in the 1994 genocide.

Over the past few years there have been various ceasefires and agreements to disarm all militant groups in the region, but little progress has been made on the ground and there have been frequent offensives by Nkunda.

“It is time the agreements and understandings about the FDLR being disarmed, demobilised and repatriated or relocated be implemented to the letter,” said African Union Chairman and Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete.

—Reuters