Several top UN officials vehemently rejected suggestions that UN
peacekeepers have failed to protect civilians in eastern Congo,
where recent fighting is causing a humanitarian catastrophe.
Aid agencies say tens of thousands of civilians are roaming the
countryside unprotected, in need of shelter, food, water and
medical care.
Some of the displaced have accused UN peacekeepers of failing to
fulfill a mandate to protect them from violence and looting, not
just by armed rebel groups but also by Congolese government
forces.
The head of UN peacekeeping, Alain Le Roy, dismissed suggestions
that UN peacekeepers in Congo, known by their French acronym MONUC,
had failed to carry out their duty.
"We are doing our utmost," he told reporters in New York by video
link from Congo, where he was meeting with senior officials from
the largest UN peacekeeping operation.
He said MONUC, which has some 17,000 troops across Congo, was doing
everything possible to fulfill its mandate in as robust a manner as
possible with limited manpower over eastern Congo, a region one and
a half times the size of France.
Earlier French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said MONUC needed
to get tougher in protecting civilians from violence.
Le Roy said he spoke with Kouchner, who said he agreed MONUC
needed to be more robust but also needed reinforcement.
Le Roy said Congolese authorities, including those in North Kivu,
acknowledged that MONUC had helped prevent renegade Congolese Tutsi
General Laurent Nkunda's CNDP rebels from seizing more territory
than they already have in eastern Congo.
"The authorities on the ground recognize that without MONUC, many
other areas would have been taken," he said. "The criticism (of)
MONUC is in many cases I must say unfair."
Nkunda's troops have been poised to take Goma, the capital of North
Kivu, since last week, but have been complying with a ceasefire
that both Le Roy and Alan Doss, the head of MONUC, described as
fragile.
No additional troops
A January peace deal collapsed in August in Congo, where a
1998-2003 war and resulting humanitarian disaster have killed an
estimated 5.4 million people, mostly through hunger and
disease.
With the crisis deepening, Doss asked the UN Security Council a
month ago for additional troops and military hardware to help him
deal with Nkunda's advance.
But Doss' deputy, Ross Mountain, said it appeared that we are not
getting those reinforcements immediately.
As a result, MONUC will have to redeploy troops protecting
civilians in other parts of the country to help secure Goma.
This, Mountain said, will expose those civilians to attacks by
more than 20 other armed groups across the region.
In the meantime, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has launched a
diplomatic drive to help back up what he described as a UN thin
blue line against the chaos.
Ban said Congolese President Joseph Kabila and Rwandan President
Paul Kagame, two leaders seen as essential to resolving the crisis,
had expressed a willingness to meet him sometime this weekend or
early next week.
He also announced he was nominating former Nigerian President
Olusegun Obasanjo as a special envoy to seek a political settlement
and was reappointing Senegalese General Babacar Gaye to command
MONUC forces after Spanish Lt. General Vicente Diaz de Villegas
lasted just seven weeks in the job.
World News Video
-
Dangerous rush to Everest summit (1:59)
-
Dozens killed in Syrian massacre (2:09)
-
'King of Romance' competes in Eurovision (1:46)
