Late last year, to Rwanda's consternation, the Ugandans aligned themselves with Jean-Pierre Bemba, a Congolese businessman who launched his own rebellion in northern Congo.

ECONOMIST: Uganda and Rwanda: Old friends, new war | The

There was a theatrical air to the opening of the trial of Jean-Pierre Bemba, the former vice-president of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in The Hague.

BBC: Defiant Jean-Pierre Bemba gets his day in court

But the leader of the Congolese rebel group, the Movement for the Liberation of Congo's (MLC) Jean-Pierre Bemba, denied the allegations in an interview with the BBC's Network Africa programme, saying his troops were more than 20 kilometres outside Bangui.

BBC: Chadians attacked in Bangui

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.

ECONOMIST: Democratic Republic of Congo