Rebels continue Congo offensive - FT.com Congolese rebels pressed on with their military offensive on Thursday, rebuffing a call by three regional presidents to halt their advance through the country's mineral-rich east. Thousands fled fighting in eastern Congo as the M23 mutineers, who took the provincial capital Goma this week, tracked west to Sake, on the route south to Bukavu, another provincial capital and home to mineral trading on the border with Rwanda. "They're going to attack us and we're going to defend ourselves and keep on advancing," Jean-Marie Runiga, political leader of M23, told Reuters news agency. In a three-way announcement issued late on Wednesday, the presidents of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda demanded that, whatever the rebel group's grievances, it "must immediately stop its offensive and pull out of Goma." "[Uganda] President Yoweri Museveni and [Rwanda] President [Paul] Kagame made it clear . . . they cannot accept expansion of this war or entertain the idea of overthrowing the legitimate government of the DRC or undermining its authority," the communiqué said. It was an unlikely joint statement from the three heads of state given that Congo's president, Joseph Kabila, along with UN experts, accuses Rwanda of backing the rebels . Rwanda denies the allegations. "It's a political statement showing the world it is not the UN that brings peace to this region - it is Kabila and Kagame," said a senior regional official in Uganda. Thousands of UN troops failed to stop the rebel occupation of Goma, a UN peacekeeping base, while months of concerned statements from the Security Council have not stopped the conflict's violent escalation. Mr Kabila had previously refused to negotiate with the rebels but appeared open to "contacts" with the group after two days of crisis talks in Kampala, which one regional expert described as "long and difficult." The M23 rebels said their mutiny was a protest against a failure to implement the details of a 2009 peace deal signed on March 23- from which the group takes its name. They claim terms over pay and rank were among conditions essential to their reintegration into the army and were never met. Diplomats said they instead ran a vast parallel network that exploited their state military authority by levying their own taxes and running smuggling rackets of minerals including tin, tungsten and tantalum ores. Renewed fighting and allegations from UN experts that the rebel commanders reported directly to Rwanda's minister of defence - General James Kabarebe, who once commanded Congo's armed forces when Mr Kabila's father, Laurent, was president - have left international donors unsure how to react. "We judge the overall body of evidence of Rwandan involvement with M23 in the DRC to be credible and compelling," a joint statement from the UK's foreign and international development secretaries said on Thursday, in a sign that support for donor-dependent Rwanda, which is still recovering from a 1994 genocide, could be at stake. These allegations will necessarily be a key factor in future aid decisions to the government of Rwanda. The UK, whose foreign office minister Mark Simmonds met Mr Kagame in Kampala on Thursday and in September reinstated a £16m payment it had delayed because of the allegations, is due to release another £21m before the end of the year. Regional heads of state will meet in Kampala at the weekend to determine a plan to resolve the crisis, hoping to avert any replay of a 1998-2003 war when millions died.