Rebel groups in the DR Congo will receive amnesty as part of a peace deal ending fighting in the violence-ravaged east.

The new amnesty law, which pardons "acts of war and insurgency", applies to home-grown rebels and militias in North and South Kivu provinces, where around 1 million people have been displaced by fighting since late 2006.

The amnesty is part of a peace deal that helped end months of heavy fighting between Tutsi insurgents, government troops, and pro-government militia in North Kivu.

The amnesty excludes acts that may constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide.

Under the peace accord, over 15,000 rebel fighters, including the Tutsi-dominated National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), were officially placed under the command of the army.

The CNDP's founder and ex-leader, General Laurent Nkunda, was arrested in January in neighbouring Rwanda. Congo accuses him of war crimes.

On Tuesday, the foreign ministers of Rwanda and Congo said Nkunda could be sent to a third country while the two nations, former enemies during the five-year conflict, hammer out the details of his transfer to Congolese authorities.

Nkunda's replacement at the head of the CNDP's armed wing, General Jean Bosco Ntaganda, is being sought by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for recruiting child soldiers.

Ntaganda reportedly now holds a key position in the Congolese army, which is preparing to launch an offensive against Rwandan Hutu rebels in South Kivu with the backing of UN peacekeepers.

Congo's wars sucked in a half dozen of the vast central African nation's neighbours and sparked a humanitarian catastrophe that has killed an estimated 5.4 million people over the past decade.

Despite the conflict's official end, many of Congo's eastern borderlands have remained a volatile patchwork of rebel fiefdoms and militia strongholds.

(REUTERS)