KIGALI: A threatened Rwandan attack on Hutu rebels in Congo would shatter fragile regional peace efforts and in all probability fail to crush their decade-old insurgency, analysts say.

So why is Rwandan President Paul Kagame bent on such a high-risk strategy in Africa's turbulent Great Lakes, where four million people have died in the past decade through genocide, war and war-related disease and hunger?

Kagame has an answer that he has used to great effect many times since he toppled a Hutu extremist government in 1994 and brought an end to the fastest genocide in modern history.

In a nutshell it is that the 1994 slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates never really ended because many of its perpetrators remain at large, attacking Rwanda from bases in the jungles of the former Zaire, and that they dream of fighting their way back home one day to finish their murderous project.

Critics say Kagame's analysis seeks to portray Rwanda as a victim whose safety depends on its effective control of the mineral-rich east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a country he has twice before invaded on the pretext of security.

Kagame is likely to invoke the genocide again in talks with Deputy US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Donald Yamamoto, expected in the region this week to try to ease tensions between DRC and Rwanda's Tutsi-led government.

"When we are counting loss of lives, for us every person, every 10, every 20 who die, it's over and above a million (already killed in the genocide)," Kagame told reporters on Saturday, referring to rebel attacks.

"That is how serious the matter is for us." Rwanda, tiny but militarily powerful, set alarm bells ringing around the region last week by threatening an attack if the DRC and UN peacekeepers failed to disarm the insurgents.

Asked if he were merely sabre-rattling to divert attention from newer African crises in Sudan and Ivory Coast, Kagame conceded he wanted the spotlight on his problems, but insisted that if this failed to produce results Rwanda would act alone.

"(The intention) is to alert the general public, the world that there is a situation that demands some action. There has been a threat for the last 10 years ... and we will take whatever action is necessary."

Analysts agree that UN peacekeepers have failed dismally to secure the voluntary disarmament of the rebels, and joint UN and Congolese government efforts to pressure the insurgents to stop fighting have in most cases been ineffective.

Few doubt Kagame is prepared to act, although as an astute strategist he is unlikely to enter Congo when the rebels - as they are at the moment - are highly alert to Rwanda's threat. But in due course Rwandan action is a real possibility, they say, for Kinshasa is unlikely to work with Rwanda on ending the insurgency due to mistrust between the two governments.

A case in point is Kinshasa's repeated refusal to give Rwanda the right of hot pursuit of the rebels across the border. The distrust stems from Rwanda's two thrusts into DRC in 1996 and 1998, actions for which Kagame obtained tacit approval in key Western capitals by, critics say, playing on widespread feelings of guilt over the world's failure to stop the genocide.

The 1998 intervention helped set off a regional war that sucked six countries into DRC and killed three million people, mostly from hunger and disease. -Reuters