In This Story:

• Nations urge negotiated settlement
• Central African leaders arrive for summit

UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- Congo demanded the withdrawal of neighboring troops from its soil and accused the U.N. Security Council of failing to act quickly to end rebel attacks in the embattled Central African nation.

"In similar cases -- in Kosovo, in Bosnia and in Kuwait -- the Security Council dealt with the situation in a prompt and real way to restore peace there. Why was there silence from the international community, particularly from the Security Council?" Congo's Foreign Minister Jean-Charles Okoto Lolakombe asked the U.N. General Assembly.

Lolokombe accused the Security Council of pursuing a policy of "double standards" and called on the United Nations to prevail on Congo's neighbors to sign a nonaggression pact.

Congo accuses neighboring Rwanda and Uganda of invading the country, killing thousands of innocent Congolese and destroying billions of dollars in infrastructure.

Uganda and Rwanda deny helping the rebels but Uganda admits it has troops in northeastern Congo to defend its security interests, and Rwanda has reserved the right to intervene to protect itself from Rwandan Hutu rebel attacks. Both nations angrily repeated their denials in responses Wednesday night to Lolakombe's speech.

Rwandan forces played a key role in Kabila's campaign to overthrow President Mobutu Sese Seko of the former Zaire and his own eventual rise to power.

Rwanda now accuses Congo of claiming it was invaded to cover up its own mismanagement and corruption. "It cannot wish away an internal rebellion." an unidentified Rwandan official told the General Assembly.

Several African leaders have defended their decisions to intervene in the Congo conflict, telling heads of state that the enormous nation would collapse if rebels ousted President Laurent Kabila.

The foreign ministers of Namibia and Zimbabwe, speaking Tuesday at the General Assembly, urged a negotiated settlement to end the fighting that began in August with a rebellion in the eastern Congo and moved west toward the capital, Kinshasa.

The rebels were driven from western Congo after forces from Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia came to Kabila's aid. The insurgents continue to hold a swath of territory in eastern Congo, bordering Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi.

France's foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, on Wednesday called for a regional solution to the conflict which now involves six or seven nations, and repeated French calls for a conference on peace in the Great Lakes part of Africa.

"It is illusory to hope for a separate settlement in each of these states," involved in Congo, he said.

Presidents of several of Congo's neighbors began arriving in Libreville, Gabon, on Wednesday for a summit with Kabila, scheduled to begin Thursday, on how to resolve the crisis.

A statement from President Omar Bongo of Gabon, issued after he held talks with Kabila on Tuesday, said the summit would look for "a peaceful settlement to the Congolese crisis and guarantee the territorial and the sovereignty of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and of the other countries in the region."

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.