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Blue helmets stretched to limit in DRC

The UN peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is stretched to the limit with an upsurge in fighting in the volatile east and needs more troops quickly from wherever it can get them, the top UN envoy to the country said on Tuesday.

Alan Doss said ideally a temporary troop increase through the UN is needed “tomorrow, but I don’t think that’s likely to happen” because an increase would require budget approval and pledges of additional soldiers.

That leaves the possibility of an outside force coming in to help for specific purposes for a limited period, he said.

Doss said this has been done before not only in the DRC but in Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone. He pointed to Operation Artemis, when a French-led EU force helped stabilize security in Bunia, the capital of violence-wracked Ituri province in the DRC for three months in 2003, saying it was “one of the ideas that’s surfaced.”

A UN official said DRC President Joseph Kabila held talks with Doss and other UN officials on Tuesday and will be asking the international community for a temporary troop increase.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussion was private.

Alain Le Roy, the UN peacekeeping chief, told reporters late on Tuesday after briefing the UN Security Council that diplomats shared “a sense of urgency” and seemed receptive to sending additional battalions and other reinforcements to shore up the UN force.

French Ambassador to the UN Jean-Maurice Ripert said his government did not have troops ready to deploy immediately, stressing instead the need for “concerted international action” to reinforce the UN peacekeeping force.

“This is obvious,” he told reporters. “It will go fast. I just called my minister a few minutes ago and I can tell you it’s on the mind of ministers all over the planet, especially throughout Africa and the Europeans.”

The Security Council late on Tuesday called for an immediate ceasefire and implementation of a disengagement plan in the DRC.

It “strongly condemned the offensive operations” battling UN peacekeepers and expressed “grave concern” about the resurgence in violence and the dangers it posed to meeting humanitarian needs.

The 17,000-strong UN force has less than 6,000 troops deployed in North Kivu, where Nkunda is threatening not only to take the capital, Goma, but to “liberate” all of the DRC, Doss told reporters at UN headquarters in New York in a video-conference from the DRC capital, Kinshasa.

That’s because the UN also needs to keep troops in three other restive provinces: South Kivu, Ituri — where there have been flare-ups in fighting — and Orientale — where rebels from the Lord’s Resistance Army, a group originally from Uganda, are active — he said.

Bombs, rockets and mortar shells exploded in the DRC yesterday and the army claimed it came under attack by troops from Rwanda.

The DRC has accused Rwanda’s Tutsi-led government of sending troops across the nearby border to help the fighters of renegade General Laurent Nkunda. Rwanda denies it.

The bombardments could be heard by journalists at an army camp in the DRC. Jeeps of officers sped along the road stopping to give instructions to soldiers toting rocket launchers and assault rifles.

The bombardment appeared to be taking place less than 8km from a village where thousands of refugees huddled amid heavy rain.
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