By Franz Wild

Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- A Rwandan Hutu militia in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, which has taken control of a corridor vacated by dissident General Laurent Nkunda’s rebels, said international mediators should include it in peace talks.

“It’s a mistake not to speak to us, because we have a role to play in pacifying the area,” Colonel Edmond Garambe, the military spokesman for the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR, said in an interview yesterday in Masisi, 50 kilometers (31 miles) west of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province. “’We are ready to respond to all questions. We will explain what we want.”

Vascular surgeon David Nott helped the 16-year-old while working 24-hour shifts with medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in Rutshuru.

The boy's left arm had been ripped off and was badly infected and gangrenous.

Mr Nott, 52, from London, had never performed the operation but followed instructions from a colleague who had.

The surgeon, who is based at Charing Cross Hospital in west London, said: "He was dying. He had about two or three days to live when I saw him."

Careful instructions

It is not clear how the boy was injured. It was suggested that he had been bitten by a hippopotamus while fishing, but Mr Nott also heard that he had been caught in crossfire between government and rebel forces.

There were just 6in (15cm) of the boy's arm remaining, much of the surrounding muscle had died and there was little skin to fold over the wound.

Mr Nott knew he needed to perform a forequarter amputation, requiring removal of the collar bone and shoulder blade.

He contacted Professor Meirion Thomas, from London's Royal Marsden Hospital, who had performed the operation before.

"I texted him and he texted back step by step instructions on how to do it," he said.

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The UN and the army deny co-operating with the rebel groups in North Kivu.

But a UN source told the BBC that the Congolese Mai Mai militia and Hutus had come together as the Front for the Liberation of North Kivu.

The FLNK says it patrols with the army in eastern DR Congo to counter renegade general, Laurent Nkunda, where recent instability has displaced some 300,000.