But on March 6th it reoccupied Bunia, Ituri's capital, and a dozen airstrips and villages nearby.
These rebels, apparently reinforced by more Rwandan regulars, are now moving north towards Ituri.
Whichever of Ituri's two tribes is briefly in the ascendant has taken revenge on the other.
Some 50, 000 people have died and some half a million people displaced from Ituri since 1999.
But it has been postponed until next month, and the violence in Ituri may derail the whole process.
His neighbours have fled the tempest of tribal killing that has raged through Ituri, a province in north-eastern Congo, in recent months.
The MLC and two rival factions of the rebel Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) are battling for control of mineral-rich Ituri province near the border with Uganda.
While expressing concern over Uganda's failure to withdraw, it has engineered a new agreement granting Uganda another month's stay in Ituri, on the ground that there is no one else to keep order.
That is why the proceedings of the ICC trial are being carried on national TV and relayed to people across Ituri, and why radio stations will be devoting their day's coverage to the event.
And as Congo crumbles, it grows harder to plunder: operations at Ituri's vast Kilomoto gold mine, for example, have virtually ceased since local peasants started digging up its airstrip and panning the dirt for ore.
One of them, Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba, whose rebel army was originally armed by Uganda, is being harried by the International Criminal Court, which is investigating allegations that his soldiers raped and killed hundreds of people in the north-eastern region of Ituri in 2003, and ate some to scare the rest.
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