In one hand, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. In the other, a spear. The rebel fighter's weapons spoke volumes about Congo's wars old and new. For centuries this country has been racked by strife. While the tools of violence have changed the outcome remains the same — killing, suffering and hardship.

General Laurent Nkunda promised yesterday to “liberate” the Democratic Republic of Congo, as the first international aid convoy to cross rebel lines since fighting broke out found displacement camps razed and empty of people.

Speaking to reporters at his jungle base, General Nkunda threatened to drive the Government from power if it refused direct talks. “We are going to pressure [the Government] to have negotiations, otherwise we will force them from power,” he said.

The Government in Kinshasa rejected the demands, raising fears of further fighting. Rebel forces remain a few miles from the outskirts of Goma, the regional capital, from where a rebel spokesman responded: “The Government has just launched the war on its people.”

In 1997 General Nkunda, who has a force of about 5,000 fighters, was a senior commander in the rebel army that forced the dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, from power after marching across the vast country.

Last week's fighting in the east of the country displaced up to 100,000 civilians, of whom 60 per cent were children, the United Nations Children's Fund said yesterday.

Returning from a visit to the region over the weekend David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary, did not rule out sending troops to the Congo, while his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner, called for more soldiers.

“No one's ruling out a military role,” Mr Miliband said in Marseilles before a meeting of European Union foreign ministers. British ministers say that there is no immediate prospect of a European force going to Congo, and still hope that the UN force, Monuc, will be sufficient.

However, Alan Doss, Monuc's head, has said his 17,000 strong force is overstretched, with only 900 UN troops responsible for Goma. The UN force, mostly Indian and Guatemalan soldiers, has been criticised for failing to protect civilians from rape and attack by retreating government forces.

The UN Secretary-General's deputy for peacekeeping will report to the Security Council this week on what can be done to strengthen the force. Mr Miliband said no decisions would be taken before the council met.

In the rebel-held town of Rutshuru, supporters of General Nkunda gathered at the football stadium to celebrate a victory over the Congolese Government and army. While hostilities between the two sides have died down, the continued instability and humanitarian crisis resulting from the fighting is far from over.

These concerns were far from the minds of General Nkunda's fighters who mustered in the overgrown grass at the Rutshuru stadium to hear the rebel general's younger brother, Captain Seco, deliver a speech berating “a corrupt government regime” whose self-interest would keep Congo shackled to the “colonial demands of the past”.

After finishing the speech, Captain Seco — bearing an uncanny resemblance to his older brother — came down from the podium to dance with locals while brandishing a spear. Earlier heavily armed rebel soldiers left a hilltop base overlooking Rutshuru, to parade through the city in a show of strength.

General Nkunda claimed to be fighting to protect ethnic Tutsis from Hutu tribal militias. “For us Congo is under occupation - an occupation of negative forces protected by our Government. And our Government has betrayed its people,” he said.

Hutu extremists responsible for the 1994 Rwanda genocide have been camped out in the jungles of eastern Congo ever since, with the Government showing little will to root them out. The Hutu militants, known as the FDLR, say that they want to liberate Rwanda but mostly they murder, rape and pillage local Congolese communities, occasionally launching pogroms against Tutsis and giving General Nkunda the justification he seeks to launch violent retaliatory attacks on Hutu civilians.

Meanwhile, at the eastern edge of the rebel-held territory a humanitarian corridor was opened up, allowing a convoy of a dozen four-wheel-drive vehicles, to reach Rutshuru for the first time in a week.

Aid workers reported finding the displacement camps razed and empty of civilians. “They were levelled,” said Sean Raster, of the British medical charity Merlin. “There's not even any materials left, it's all been looted. We are very concerned about the welfare of those people.”

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