The Democratic Republic of Congo's foreign minister yesterday called for the country's main rebel group to return to the peace accord and accused Rwanda of being behind their withdrawal from negotiations.

"The Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) is an integral part of the global accord.

We regret their decision to suspend their participation in the peace process and hope that they will come back in goodwill," Foreign Minister Leonard She Okitundu said.

The Rwanda-backed rebel movement announced on Monday that it had pulled out of a follow-up committee on the central African country's peace process because of the government's alleged bad faith over issues affecting the army.

"In the light of what is happening, we have the impression that this suspension was ordered by Rwanda," Okitundu speculated after a meeting of the African Union's executive council.

"We think that South Africa will do everything possible to bring back the RCD, which is isolated, to the peace process," he continued.

"We are not going to destroy two years of joint work right at the moment that the transitional institutions are being put into place," the minister said.

Okitundu dismissed the RCD's accusations that the government had blocked issues over the army and said no deal on the army had been agreed in Pretoria, South Africa, when the global peace accord was signed in December.

Germany also expressed concern over the rebels' withdrawal and urged a speedy implementation of the transitional government.

"It is very important that the transitional government is set up quickly in DRC in order to further the peace process," Germany's deputy foreign minister Kerstin Mueller said after meeting with Okitundu.

"Berlin will help Kinshasa to stop the civil war," she said, adding that Germany had not yet decided whether to send troops to the country to participate in an international peacekeeping force.

But Okitundu said 20 countries had so far volunteered to join the force.

The RCD was backed by Rwanda in a bid, launched in 1998, to oust the government of then president Laurent Kabila, which boiled over into all-out war that drew in half a dozen other African countries and claimed some 2,5-million lives, both directly in combat and indirectly through disease and hunger. – Sapa-AFP.