Jailed soldiers freed in Kabila's Congo

KINSHASA, Congo (Reuters) -- More than 1,000 Congolese soldiers, jailed on minor charges, have been freed from Kinshasa's central prison following a pardon from President Laurent Kabila, police and military sources said on Tuesday.

The releases of 1,227 soldiers began on Saturday and followed the launch last week of the second army recruitment campaign of the year in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Kabila's government, fighting a Rwandan and Ugandan-backed rebellion since 1998, said at the start of the recruitment drive that it needed a strong army to "kick Rwandan, Ugandan and Burundian forces out of the country."

Police sources said the freed soldiers would be reincorporated into the army.

"The president pardoned them... they are the sons of the country," a source close to armed forces chief Sylvestre Luecha told Reuters.

The main warring parties signed a peace deal in mid-1999 but it has been regularly breached.

Kabila's main ally, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, has thousands of soldiers fighting in the Congo.

Namibia and Angola also sent troops to prop up Kabila after the rebels took up arms but Angola, fighting a civil war of its own, has played a much more limited role since early in the conflict.

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