Plea for more UN troops to avert war in Congo
A Congolese soldier carries a wounded comrade on a road north of Kibati (Photo: Walter Astrada/AFP/Getty Images)
Saturday November 08 2008
THE Congo is days away from all out war a UN official warned last night as fighting escalated. And he called on the Security Council to act urgently to avoid a disaster saying that 3,000 additional peacekeepers were needed immediately.
"We are very concerned that the situation may deteriorate further," Edmond Mulet, UN assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping operations, said in New York after returning from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Last week, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon formally asked the council for 3,085 additional police and military personnel to top up the 17,000-strong peacekeeping mission in Congo, known by its French acronym MONUC.
The latest call for beefing up the UN force follows an intensification of fighting between Tutsi rebels and Congo's army that has uprooted hundreds of thousands of people near the border with Rwanda and created a humanitarian crisis. "It is thus crucial that the Security Council considers without further delays our request to provide additional forces to MONUC, which have been requested a few weeks ago," he said. MONUC chief Alan Doss made had requested more troops when he briefed the council on October 3, but the 15-nation body has yet to act on it.
Council diplomats from Western countries told journalists that members were split on the question of whether MONUC, the largest UN peacekeeping force in the world, needs more troops or simply a redeployment of existing forces.
Mr Mulet said MONUC was already shifting forces to Goma, the capital of North Kivu province on the Rwandan border. However, he said that MONUC was stretched very thinly and was busy with armed militants on four separate fronts. "Things have taken a turn for the worse, the situation is really, really, really bad," he said. Mr Mulet also dismissed reports that Angolan troops were present in Congo. He said Congolese government soldiers trained in Angola had probably been mistakenly identified as Angolan.
He added that the UN was convinced there was no military solution to the crisis in eastern Congo, a region the size of France that is rich in minerals and other resources.
Summit
"The United Nations is actively engaging the parties at the political level," he said, referring to a summit in Nairobi where Ban, UN peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy and other U.N. officials were meeting with Congolese and Rwandan leaders.
Mr Le Roy was scheduled to brief the council on his MONUC reconfiguration plans on Tuesday, Mulet said. New York-based group Human Rights Watch on Thursday accused Congolese Tutsi rebels of war crimes in Kiwanja, where reporters accompanying UN peacekeepers found the bodies of numerous civilian shooting victims a day after rebels drove pro-government militiamen from the town. Rebel commanders said they had targeted only pro-government militia.
- Louis Charbonneau in New York
