Several European nations are pushing to send personnel to Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) to help secure humanitarian aid to bolster the UN Security Council’s expected addition of 3,100 troops to its beleaguered peacekeeping mission, diplomats said on Wednesday.
France, Belgium and Sweden are considering how to give DR Congo added help by arriving ahead of UN peacekeepers and securing areas around Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu Province, and roads needed to distribute food and other humanitarian aid, French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert said.
Once the council approves the additional peacekeeping troops “it will then be easier for the EU to try to see what they can do on the purely humanitarian side,” said Ripert, whose nation holds the EU presidency.
PHOTO: AFP
The council was expected to approve a French-sponsored resolution yesterday that would make good on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s request for the additional soldiers to beef up the UN peacekeeping force on a temporary basis. Ban’s top envoy to DR Congo, Alan Doss, recommended the increase more than a month ago.
Several African nations such as Senegal, Kenya and Angola are among those that could contribute extra troops, council diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity because talks are still under way.
The peacekeeping mission, known as MONUC, is authorized to have 17,000 personnel including 600 unarmed military observers.
“We accept the idea that MONUC should be more efficient on the ground. They should use their full capacities,” Ripert said.
“And we have to make sure that their capacities are adapted to the kind of threat and the kind of challenges they have to face,” he said. “This is why we have decided to answer to the request.”
Doss said UN peacekeepers will police the buffer zone they expect to be created when rebel forces pull back from areas they control in the conflict-wracked east of the country.
Congolese rebels pulled hundreds of fighters back from some of their front lines on Wednesday, in keeping with their promise a day earlier to do so to allow talks with the army, whose soldiers fled some areas of the province.
Ban said he welcomed the move and hoped that safe passage would be given for humanitarian workers.
But while out patrolling, UN forces swapped gunfire with pro-government Mai Mai militiamen, who attacked with machine guns in Kibitutu, a village about 72km north of Goma.
The area is just south of the envisioned UN-policed buffer zone. MUNOC already has about 6,000 peacekeeping troops in the region. The militiamen usually had been allied with DR Congo’s government.
The fighting has displaced at least 250,000 people this year.
With its troops spread thin in DR Congo’s vast areas, the UN’s peacekeeping mission has been criticized for not doing more to protect civilians.
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS