BY PETER JAMES SPIELMANN, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

The U.N. Security Council is setting its sights on the FDLR militia as the top threat to the Democratic Republic of Congo’s government, now that the M23 rebels have been defeated.

A council statement issued Thursday repeatedly names the Rwandan Hutu-dominated Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda as the key menace remaining in the mineral-rich Congo.

The council noted that the FDLR is under U.N. sanctions and its “leaders and members include perpetrators of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and have continued to promote and commit ethnically-based and other killings in Rwanda” and Congo.

FDLR’s activity in Congo has prompted Rwanda to invade Congo twice before to try to wipe out the group. It also has provoked a series of Congolese Tutsi rebellions, including the latest one launched by M23 in April 2012.

M23 retreated into Uganda after being hammered by U.N.-backed Congolese government forces and announcing its surrender last week. M23 launched its rebellion in April 2012, becoming the latest reincarnation of a Tutsi rebel group dissatisfied with the Congolese government. The rebels accused Congo’s government of failing to honour all the terms of a peace deal signed in March 2009 with M23’s precursor group, the CNDP.

At their peak the M23 rebels overtook Goma, a key provincial capital in Congo. But in the past year they had been weakened by internal divisions and waning Rwandan support. The Congolese military capitalized on these rebel setbacks by pushing ahead with new offensives beginning in August that were supported by a brigade of U.N.military forces with an unprecedented mandate to attack the rebels.

The FDLR and M23 rebel groups each have their origins in the scars left by Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.

The M23 fighters were mainly from the Tutsi ethnic group that was targeted for extermination during the genocide. Rwanda and Uganda were accused of supporting the M23 rebels. Both countries, whose militaries in the past have invaded eastern Congo to fight rebel groups operating there, deny the allegations despite evidence given by United Nations experts.

The Rwanda genocide’s perpetrators were from the Hutu ethnic group who fled across the border and took refuge in the jungles of eastern Congo. Their leaders regrouped under the banner of the FDLR.

Hutu extremist fighters from the FDLR have used Congo as a base to invade Rwanda. Numerous reports had indicated that the FDLR has been tacitly backed by Congo’s government, which wanted to use it as a buffer against Rwanda.

While the FDLR has weakened in recent years, analysts say it is still well entrenched and its presence in eastern Congo is a reason many other armed groups say they exist. A June report from a United Nations expert panel said the FDLR’s 1,500 members were mostly located in North Kivu province. It said the armed group has been weakened by high rates of surrender as well as divisions between a hard-line faction that favours armed combat and more moderate members who seek demobilization and reintegration.

After the FDLR, the council also names other militias such as the Lord’s Resistance Army led by Joseph Kony, the Allied Democratic Forces and various small Mayi Mayi groups still roaming eastern Congo as threats to be subdued.