Published on 12:00 AM, October 02, 2010

UN to publish Congo war crimes report

The United Nations is set to publish a controversial report into human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the 1990s.
The final version is believed to have toned down its language after an earlier, leaked draft provoked fury from Uganda and Rwanda.
Both countries were accused of committing war crimes against ethnic Hutus in DR Congo during the conflict.
They had threatened to pull out of UN peacekeeping missions in response.
The report into conflicts in the DR Congo between 1993 and 2003 is said to detail crimes never previously documented.
It covers some 600 incidents and includes allegations of massacres of civilians, torture, and the destruction of infrastructure that led to civilian deaths.
Rwanda had reacted furiously to allegations that its Tutsi-led army may have committed genocide in DR Congo, known as Zaire until 1997, against Rwandan Hutus.
Correspondents say the accusation of genocide against Rwanda's current government, led by President Paul Kagame, is particularly sensitive, as he has portrayed himself as having ended the mass killings of his fellow Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994.
Some of the militiamen responsible for that genocide then fled into Zaire, where they were pursued by troops loyal to President Kagame.
But the UN report accuses them of killings tens of thousands of Hutu civilians, who had fled with the militiamen.
Jason Stearns, DR Congo analyst and blogger, told the BBC that the only difference between the draft and final reports is that lawyers have gone through it with a fine toothcomb, especially where genocide is mentioned.