UN may ban weapons in DRC
2007-01-11 07:25
Kinshasa - The United Nations mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo said on Wednesday that it planned to make illegal the carrying of weapons without official authorisation in the gold-rich Ituri province.
UN military spokesperson lieutenant Didier Rancher said: "Nobody can carry arms without having the official documentation.
"We hope to stop the fighting between these armed militia groups and the FARDC (the DRC army) which is putting local populations on the road to exile."
Rancher said the "district without arms" strategy in the northeastern region would be implemented in co-operation between the Congolese authorities and the UN mission, known as Monuc.
An estimated 60 000 people had been killed in Ituri on the DRC's border with Uganda since 1999 in inter-ethnic violence and as rival militias vied for control of gold mining areas while terrorising the local population.
Local warlords had agreed to disarm their militias in return for positions as generals and colonels in the regular army of the DRC, the vast central African country, which last year held its first multiparty elections in four decades.
However, sporadic fighting had continued with some of the warlords being slow to live up to their promises to disarm, most notably Peter Karim, who was thought to have about 1 000 solders under his command.