By Lubunga Bya'Ombe

KINSHASA, April 7 (Reuters) - One of eastern Congo's most feared militia warlords joined the national army on Saturday with the rank of colonel under a disarmament process to pacify the violent region after years of bloodshed, the army said.

Peter Karim's Front of Nationalists and Integrationists (FNI) has long been regarded as one of the main obstacles to peace in Democratic Republic of Congo's northeastern Ituri district, racked by militia violence since a 1998-2003 war.

The FNI and two other armed groups in Ituri signed peace deals last November after Congo's first free elections in over four decades. The group slid back into violence in December, but its fighters started joining a disarmament process in February.

General Vainqueur Mayala, the army's commander of operations in Ituri, said Karim had handed himself over on Saturday at Kpandroma, 70 km (44 miles) from Ituri's main town Bunia, in what he called "an important step in pacifying Ituri".

The November deals, under which Karim and another militia leader were offered the rank of colonel, were criticised at the time by U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, which said they should be arrested to face war crimes charges instead.

Mayala told Reuters by phone from Kpandroma that Karim would be transferred to another part of the country, to be decided by the army chief of staff, and integrated into the national army.

Seven other FNI officers gave themselves up along with Karim, as well as 307 fighters who were now at a transit centre.

Karim still has some fighters in the bush but will encourage them to join the disarmament process too, Mayala said.

"We are limited by our accommodation, as the transit centre holds no more than 500 people," he said.

Several provinces of eastern Congo are torn by violence involving local ethnic militias and some Rwandan Hutu groups who fled over the border after their country's 1994 genocide.

Another feared Ituri warlord known as Cobra Matata is still at large. Mayala said he was "in touch with Cobra Matata where he is in the bush, and he too will come and join us at some point".

The 1998-2003 war triggered a humanitarian crisis that killed an estimated 4 million people and aid workers say 1,200 more die each day from war-related violence, hunger or disease.

Landmark elections last year, won by President Joseph Kabila and his allies, were meant to draw a line under decades of instability, but many parts of the vast country are still plagued by violence. Hundreds of people were killed last month in two days of fighting in the capital Kinshasa itself.

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