More UN troops for DRC welcome

2008-11-24 20:05

Oslo - The planned deployment of extra UN troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo is a welcome move but not enough to restore peace, France's Human Rights Minister Rama Yade said on Monday.

The United Nations Security Council decided on Thursday to send an additional 3 000 peacekeepers to the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) to beef up the 17 000 troops in the country the size of Western Europe.

"You can have as many troops as you want, the real question is where they are stationed," Yade said during a visit to Oslo.

"It makes no sense to concentrate most of them in Kinshasa or in the peaceful zones. These troops need to be stationed in the east," she said.

Only about 5 000 UN troops are deployed in the troubled province of Nord-Kivu, where fighting resumed in late August between rebels and the military, forcing at least 250 000 people to flee.

"We need to see if the UN mandate can be more robust," Yade added.

"Also, the people who are sent there need to get along. If you send people who don't get along because relations between their countries are tense, then you just transfer these problems to MONUC," she said, providing no further details.

"The situation is very serious," said Yade, who visited the country in June.

"When you come back from DR Congo, you come back from hell. I've never seen anything like what is going on there."

According to estimates from the International Rescue Committee published in January, the war, famine and disease have killed 5.4 million people in DR Congo since 1998, making it the bloodiest conflict since World War II.

- AFP