"It cannot be true that we can engage in such acts at a time when we have a multinational stabilisation force in the region to help us," junior Defence Minister Ruth Nankabirwa told AFP.

Mbusa Nyamwisi, a former DRC rebel leader, said in Kinshasa on Thursday that his forces had discovered 68 mortar shells and 21,000 rounds of ammunition on board a privately-owned DRC plane at Beni airport in northeastern DRC.

Nyamwisi led the Rally for Congolese Democracy-Liberation Movement (RCD-ML), a former rebel group.

He is now minister for regional cooperation in DRC's new transitional government.

The RCD-ML, which claimed that the ammunition came from Uganda, controls the Nord-Kivu province where Beni airport is situated.

Uganda's intelligence officer in charge of the DRC, Colonel Peter Kerim, also denied Nyamwisi's allegations.

"We don't own any plane flying over DRC and we have information that a rebel commander in the area had chartered the plane to carry his arms," Kerim said.

The RCD-ML said it had detained four men who tried to smuggle the ammunition, which, it claimed, were destined for the Lendu militia.

Inter-ethnic massacres between the minority Hema and the majority Lendu in Ituri have claimed the lives of 50,000 people since 1999 and displaced half a million others. The ongoing massacres led to the deployment of a French-led UN peacekeeping force in the town of Bunia last month.

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