(Recasts lead, updates with fugitives, paragraphs 14-15)

By Carlos Pontes

QUINTA DO LAGO, Portugal, April 11 (Reuters) - Congolese former warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba arrived in Portugal on Wednesday after leaving his country following the defeat of his militia fighters by government troops three weeks ago.

Bemba made the journey from Democratic Republic of Congo in a private jet after being escorted in the early hours of the morning by U.N. peacekeepers from the South African embassy, where he spent the last three weeks holed up with his family.

Travelling on a tourist visa, he was due to receive medical treatment in Portugal for an old leg injury. Portuguese officials have said his stay will not be a long-term exile.

His plane arrived at the airport of Portugal's southern tourist city of Faro at around noon.

From there he was whisked under police escort to a luxury villa in the southern Algarve resort of Quinta do Lago. The house was guarded by a group of plainclothes Portuguese police officers, who allowed no one to approach.

Bemba's aides in Kinshasa confirmed the former presidential contender was now in Portugal.

"He left as a free man. He's arrived safely in Portugal and he'll be looking after his health," Francois Muamba, secretary general of Bemba's Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), the biggest opposition party in parliament, told reporters.

A convoy of around 15 armoured vehicles belonging to the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo (MONUC) had carried Bemba in a convoy across the deserted streets of Congo's riverside capital early on Wednesday.

Tanks and blue-helmeted riot police stood guard at the N'Djili airport outside the city, but there were no crowds or violence. The only onlookers were a small group of reporters.

FIGHTERS FLED ACROSS RIVER

Bemba, who led a Ugandan-backed rebellion against the Kinshasa government in Congo's 1998-2003 war, lost a presidential run-off in October to incumbent Joseph Kabila in the vast, mineral-rich central African state's first free polls in more than 40 years.

Congo's Senate granted Bemba authorisation to leave the country on the condition he provided a written commitment not to engage in political activities while in Portugal.

Government officials had initially said a warrant had been issued for his arrest on charges of high treason for his part in the March 22-23 clashes in Kinshasa, in which up to 600 people were killed, according to European ambassadors.

But officials later backtracked and said no warrant had been issued.

In neighbouring Congo Republic, local Red Cross officials said on Wednesday more than 100 of Bemba's militiamen who had fled across the Congo river after the fighting were transferred to a government-run camp 70 km (45 miles) north of Brazzaville.

They were accompanied by around 60 civilians, including women and children. The governments of the two Congos were negotiating their possible future safe return to Kinshasa.

Last year's elections were intended to draw a line under the war in Africa's third biggest country, which killed nearly 4 million people through violence, hunger and disease.

Ethnic militias still operate in some eastern areas and Bemba's and Kabila's forces have clashed several times on the streets of the capital. (Additional reporting by Joe Bavier in Kinshasa, Henrique Almeida in Lisbon and Christian Tsoumou in Brazzaville)

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