A draft of a cease-fire agreement that the presidents were expected to sign was withdrawn as the leaders bickered over the treatment of the rebels, according to Zimbabwean officials hosting the summit.

The rebels left the meeting site at the Elephant Hills hotel in this resort town, saying they had not been allowed to attend the joint talks.

``They will know we exist only when we start shooting,'' snapped rebel leader Bizima Karaha.

Karaha said the rebels support a cease-fire but ``because we have been excluded from this, we are not bound by it''.

The rebels, excluded from two previous summits over the past month, arrived yesterday for the talks with the presidents of Congo, Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Rwanda.

Karaha said the rebel delegation was harassed at the VictoriaFalls airport and was kept under guard in an unventilated room for four hours yesterday.Joseph Bideri, spokesman for Rwandan president Pasteur Bizimungu, said the talks broke up after Rwanda and Uganda failed to persuade the summit to meet the rebels face to face.

``You can't talk about a cease-fire without talking to fighters. It is going to be difficult to come to any meaningful cease-fire,'' he said.

Congolese president Laurent Kabila has refused to meet the rebels face-to-face. Zambian president Frederick Chiluba yesterday shuttled between the two camps during the talks, said George Charamba, spokesman for Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe. The rebels also met Organisation of African Unity secretary general Salim Ahmed Salim.

Salim said the aim of the talks was to reach a cease-fire that would ensure the continuation of Kabila's government and bring about democratic reforms.Lolakombe said Kabila's allies would leave Congo only when Rwanda and Uganda retreated completely behind their ownborders.

``The people of Congo won't accept aggressors on a centimeter of our country,'' he said.

After the rebels stormed out of the hotel, the seven heads of state said defense ministers would meet at the OAU headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Thursday to work out details of a cease-fire, of the withdrawal of foreign troops and for political reform in Congo.

In the rebels' eastern Congo stronghold of Goma, rebel commander Ernest Wamba Dia Wamba said that 25 people were killed and 40 wounded yesterday when planes supporting Kabila's government bombed the lake Tanganyika port of Kalemie for the second day. It was not possible to independently verify the rebel claim.