UN evacuates Kinshasa staff

2004-06-07 08:29

Bukavu - The United Nations peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of Congo began evacuating staff from the capital Kinshasa on Sunday over security concerns, after a renegade general seized a key eastern town, sparking fears the country's peace process was unravelling.

The seizure of the town of Bukavu on June 2 by dissident general Laurent Nkunda triggered protests in Kinshasa and other cities against the UN peacekeeping force (Monuc), in which at least 12 people were officially reported to have died.

"This measure primarily concerns military observers whose vehicles and posts were ransacked and who have received threats, civilian workers whose equipment and offices were destroyed or pillaged and civil servants whose homes, particularly in Kinshasa, were pillaged," the UN said in an internal document obtained by AFP.

The Bukavu violence, in which at least 88 people are thought to have died over the space of 10 days, took place in the presence of hundreds of UN troops, who are authorised to use force in self-defence and when the lives of civilians are threatened.

Protesters accused the UN of not blaming neighbouring Rwanda for engineering the capture of Bukavu and even of colluding with Rwandan troops.

The UN said the evacuation of staff from Kinshasa - who were ferried across the Congo river to Brazzaville, the nearby capital of the Republic of Congo - was a temporary measure taken because of the "serious damage" protesters had caused to UN property.

"(This) has led Monuc to provisionally review its presence and redeploy a part of its staff, which is no longer in a position to work," its internal document said.

It said some of its employees would be sent to other UN missions.

South Africans killed

Earlier on Sunday two UN peacekeepers from South Africa were killed in an ambush near the eastern city of Goma in which nine of their colleagues were wounded.

The UN's spokeswoman in Goma, capital of Nord-Kivu province, said the ambush did not appear to be linked to the seizure of Bukavu, capital of neighbouring Sud-Kivu province.

Nkunda and his forces chased the army out of Bukavu on June 2, saying he wanted to rid the town of its "bad" military leadership and protect the Banyamulenge Tutsis from "massacres".

On Sunday he announced he was pulling his 4 000 troops out of the town centre as a "goodwill gesture" and was leaving Bukavu in Monuc's hands.

"I have been in touch with the head of Monuc, William Swing, and with some ministers in the transitional government who begged me to give the transition a chance," Nkunda told a news conference.

"(The Bukavu operation) is really finished but I will say my last word when my complaints are taken into account," he said, adding that he had asked the Kinshasa government to send a new governor to Sud-Kivu soon.

Monuc said Nkunda and about 700 men had indeed left Bukavu on Sunday afternoon but he had not removed all his soldiers.

- AFP