AP Photo A rebel from Laurent Nkunda’s renegade movement talks to a civilian near a checkpoint, today near Kibumba some 40 kilometers north of Goma in eastern Congo. Thousands of war-weary refugees returned to the the road today, taking advantage of a rebel-called cease-fire to try to reach home beyond the front lines of this week’s battles in eastern Congo.

GOMA, Congo — With a cease-fire appearing to halt most fighting, a rebel leader said Thursday he wanted direct talks with the Congo government. Envoys from the U.S. and U.N. were sent in to help set up negotiations.

Sporadic gunfire could still be heard Thursday night in Goma, the provincial capital of eastern Congo, but the city was calm for much of the day.

That was in sharp contrast to Wednesday, when tens of thousands of residents, refugees and government soldiers fled in a chaotic torrent ahead of advancing rebels. When the sun went down, drunk soldiers pillaged and raped in Goma, killing at least nine people in their homes, according to U.N. Radio Okapi.

“We want peace for people in the region,” rebel leader Laurent Nkunda told The Associated Press by telephone after halting his advance on Goma and calling a unilateral cease-fire.

Nkunda also wanted to discuss his objections to a $9 billion-dollar deal that gives China access to vast mineral riches in exchange for a railway and highway.

He also wants the urgent disarmament of a Rwandan Hutu militia that he says works with the government and preys on his minority Tutsi people.

“It’s not acceptable for government soldiers to be fighting alongside genociders,” Nkunda said. “We want peace for people in the region.”

Nkunda launched a low-level rebellion three years ago claiming Congo’s transition to democracy had excluded the Tutsi. Despite agreeing in January to a U.N.-brokered cease-fire, he resumed fighting in August.

He alleges the Congolese government has not protected ethnic Tutsis from the Rwandan Hutu militia that escaped to Congo after helping slaughter half a million Rwandan Tutsis in 1994’s genocide.

Congo has charged Nkunda himself with involvement in war crimes, and Human Rights Watch says it has documented summary executions, torture, and rape committed by soldiers under Nkunda’s command in 2002 and 2004.

Rights groups have also criticized government forces for atrocities and widespread looting.

Nkunda’s rebellion has threatened to reignite the back-to-back wars that roiled Congo from 1996 to 2002, drawing in eight African nations. President Joseph Kabila, elected in 2006 in the first vote in 40 years, has struggled ever since to contain the bloody insurgency in the east.

The United Nations sent Guatemalan special forces to reinforce its peacekeepers in Goma, where it also added police units and a third helicopter gunship, U.N. spokesman Kevin Kennedy said in New York. He said 850 Indian troops patrolled the city overnight.

The UN has only 6,000 of its 17,000-strong Congo peacekeepers in the east because of unrest in other provinces.

It says the force is badly overstretched, but European nations were sharply divided Thursday over whether to send troops to Congo.

The peacekeepers are the only organized force on the ground though attempts were being made to regroup government soldiers who scattered in disarray, Kennedy said.

The top U.S. envoy for Africa, Jendayi Frazer, arrived in Kinshasa to help find a political solution for Congo. She planned to meet with Kabila, and possibly later travel to Rwanda to meet with President Paul Kagame.

“It is a very, very tense situation,” said Kennedy, who was also heading to Kinshasa. “The most important thing the mission can do and that the international community can do ... is to ensure that there are contacts that restart the political process.”

Nkunda, who commands about 10,000 rebels, said he wants to take Goma, a city of 600,000 near the border with Rwanda. But so far he has heeded U.N. demands to stay out of the city.

The situation in Goma was calm Thursday. Government soldiers in trucks and U.N. peacekeepers in armored cars patrolled. Almost all shops were shuttered and schools stayed closed, but people thronged the streets, discussing the crisis and buying vegetables by the road.

Nkunda said his fighters had retreated seven miles (12 kilometers) from Goma.

The recent fighting, the worst in years, has forced more than 200,000 people from their homes in two months, the United Nations says. Nkunda has taken large swaths of territory from the army. Kennedy said it seemed government soldiers were blocking some refugees.

In the AP interview, Nkunda never mentioned the word Tutsi, saying his mission is to protect the Congolese people. Hutus are the biggest population group in eastern Congo. Tutsis are about 3 percent.

All sides are believed to fund fighters by illegally mining minerals — meaning they have no financial interest in stopping the fighting.

The rebel leader is especially concerned about the $9 billion agreement in which China gets access to Congo’s vast mineral riches. The joint venture is between Congo’s state-owned mining company Gecamines and a consortium of Chinese companies, which is believed to include China Railway Group, Sinohydro and Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Company.

Under the deal, the joint venture can extract 10.6 million tons of copper and more than 600,000 tons of cobalt.

In return, Congo will get $6 billion worth of new roads, two hydroelectric dams, hospitals, schools and a railway. The remaining $3 billion will be invested in mining infrastructure.

Demands for minerals have fueled Congo’s conflicts for years. Experts confirmed the situation was unchanged from 2001, when a U.N. investigation found the fighting in Congo had become mainly about “access, control and trade” of five key mineral resources: coltan, diamonds, copper, cobalt and gold.

Uganda and Rwanda in particular turned their soldiers in Congo into armies of business, it said.

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AP writers Louise Watt contributed to this report from London, Edith Lederer from the United Nations in New York.

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