"Every citizen in the world knows how committed South Africa is peace in the DRC," said Billy Masethla, a security adviser to the South African president.

On Monday, Mai-Mai Operational Commander Lambert Konga Kanape told AFP that for more than a month containers painted in the UN colours and containing heavy arms had been arriving in Kindu, the Maniema provincial capital, from South Africa via Kigali.

"Besides the containers, men in military uniform and speaking English -- who might be mercenaries -- are training soldiers of the RCD (the Rwandan-backed Congolese Rally for Democracy) to use these weapons," he charged.

South African troops serving with the UN force in the DRC, known as MONUC, are currently deployed in Kindu.

"These are utter lies. The people here are soldiers under the United Nations," Masethla, who was in Kinshasa, told AFP in South Africa by telephone.

"This man's imagination has taken him too far. This is maliciousness of the highest order."

WAR.WIRE