Berlin  - Rwandan President Paul Kagame Wednesday urged Germany to act against a rebel leader under UN sanction who was arrested by the authorities in April 2006 but later released.

"The German government needs to address this problem," Kagame said following a meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin.

The UN Security Council had recently passed a resolution on dealing with leaders like Ignace Murwanasyaka, head of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda
(DFLR), a Rwandan Hutu rebel group operating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Kagame said.

Western countries should not support the resolution and then fail to take steps to address it, Kagame said.

Germany and other European countries should act against leaders like Murwanasyaka, who was responsible for "leading genocide in Congo and the region," he said.

Merkel said Germany was looking into the issue closely, adding that some of the people concerned were under UN travel sanction and had had their bank accounts frozen.

She paid tribute to Rwanda's efforts to attain the UN Millennium Goals, and said Germany wanted to support parliamentary elections there later this year.

Merkel noted, however, that the situation in the east of the DRC was "unsatisfactory" and that women were bearing the brunt of this.

Kagame said aid alone was insufficient for African countries and that there was a need to emphasize trade and investment. (dpa)