Monday July 12 3:17 PM ET
compliments of carswell
UN Council Tells Congo Rebels To Sign Peace Pact
By Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Security Council members Monday urged rebel leaders in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to sign a cease-fire agreement, a condition before any peacekeepers would be sent to the country.
Six African nations involved in the 11-month old conflict signed an accord Saturday in Lusaka, Zambia, but rebel groups refused to do so because of a split within their ranks.
Council members, in a statement read by Malaysian ambassador Agam Hasmy, ''strongly urged the rebels to resolve their difference and to sign the agreement as soon as possible.''
Hasmy said members ''expressed dismay'' at the action of the rebel movements and said peace efforts ''should not be held hostage to the internal division among the rebels.''
The United Nations is preparing to send a peacekeeping force to the former Zaire and the council statement said members would ''consider concrete action'' in implementing the agreement ''once all parties have subscribed to it.''
But because of the split in rebel ranks, Secretary-General Kofi Annan has delayed his report on peacekeeping plans until next week and a four-member U.N. assessment mission will talk to officials in Lusaka rather than go to the Congo immediately.
Annan was is expected to recommend the council approve a force of up to 20,000 soldiers, mainly drawn from African countries. Approval could take up to six weeks if the cease-fire holds and if the U.S. Congress agrees to pay its 31 percent share of the bill.
But diplomats said that once the shooting stopped, some 500 military observers might be dispatched to the Congo before final approval of the peacekeeping mission.
Parties to the Congo accord want U.N. peacekeepers to help disarm combatants, including Rwanda's hard-core Hutu militia, which fled their country in 1994 after the genocide of up to a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
However, the mandate for the force will probably be less robust than the Lusaka agreement envisioned. U.N. troops, council members said, would not be authorized to track down and fight the Hutus in order to disarm them.
Congo's U.N. ambassador Andre Kapanga said the troops should do more than observe and defend themselves, noting the failure of the U.N. mission in Angola ''where they went and didn't do anything.''
The complicated struggle in the Congo pits rebels in the east, backed by neighboring Rwanda and Uganda, against Kabila, who was supported by troops from Zimbabwe, Chad, Angola and Namibia. The Hutus, who had used the Congo to conduct raids into Rwanda, sided with Kabila.
<< Previous Thread |
