UN troops in DRC 'overstretched'

2008-04-10 08:10

New York - The United Nations mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is overstretched, and redeploying its resources to the restive east could create a security vacuum and fan tensions elsewhere, says a report released this week.

Ban Ki-moon's report to the UN Security Council warned that resources of the 22 000-strong UN mission known as Monuc were "stretched to the limit, creating risks in areas of potential and rising tension, including in Bas-Congo and elsewhere".

The secretary-general argued that Monuc's current force levels "do not reflect the critical role" the mission was expected to play under recent agreements reached among DRC, Rwandan and armed groups operating in DRC's volatile far east, especially North Kivu and South Kivu provinces.

The Kivus had long been a source of instability in DRC, even after the official end of the civil war in 2003, and Ban made it clear that the region could still undermine the stability of the rest of the country.

"Long-term stability in the Kivus will depend on many interlinked factors," Ban noted, underscoring the need to fully extend state authority across the two provinces and for a "substantially strengthened" national army.

But he also warned that improving security in the far east could not be at the expense of other regions, such as Bas-Congo in the far west, where national police had been involved in sometimes deadly clashes with the Bundu Dia Kongo (BDK) politico-religious movement since January.

Ban urged DRC authorities to "refrain from the disproportionate use of force".

- AFP