Some 400 Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) who in September crossed from Sudan to the Garamba National Park in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are the latest of several foreign groups which the government says must leave the country by Friday or face serious consequences.

Uganda has asked the Democratic Republic of Congo to arrest and hand over Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels who are allegedly seeking asylum in the vast central African state, a senior government official said on Monday.

Yesterday delegates from the Congolese government and some representatives of the Ugandan rebel group of the Lord's resistance Army (LRA) met for the first time.

The self-styled MRC (Congolese Revolutionary Movement) apparently distributed arms and cash to militias active in Ituri in the past days in Bambu, around 50km from Bunia, east Dmocratic Republic of Congo.

The UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) does not plan to capture a dissident former general of the Congolese army against whom an international arrest warrant was issued recently, an official told IRIN on Thursday.

A 'peace market' for commercial trade between different communities was inaugurated yesterday in Bunia, capital of the Ituri province (east Democratic Republic of Congo) in occasion of celebrations, held also in other parts of the nation, to mark the World Peace Day promoted by the UN.

Soldiers from the 12th brigade deserted their posts in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in the last week, the military spokesman for the UN said on Tuesday, but 580 of them have already returned to base.

The governor of Congo's South Kivu Province, Didas Kaningini, said on Monday that 48 dissident soldiers who were arrested recently as they returned from exile to the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) had escaped from a jail.

The army of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) said it arrested 48 dissident soldiers, including 11 officers, on Tuesday in the east of the country near its borders with Rwanda and Burundi as they were returning from exile.

Reports that troops are defecting in large numbers to join a dissident former general fermenting a rebellion in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) were refuted by an army spokesman in Kinshasa as well as by a letter purportedly written by the ex-general, Laurent Nkunda.