OWN CORRESPONDENT, Goma | Friday 8.00pm.
UNITED Nations humanitarian agencies will resume operations in the rebel-controlled east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, visiting UN official Martin Griffith announced on Friday.
“The humanitarian situation justifies our intervention, but it is still too early to set a date,” Griffith, the UN deputy secretary general in charge of humanitarian action, said in the rebels’ principal headquarters on Goma.
Griffith, who had stopped first in Kinshasa, has spoken with both DRC officials and rebels about the necessary conditions for humanitarian action, including “impartiality, neutrality, independence, advocacy of human rights and openness.” “The deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the DRC, particularly in the east, as well as the growing insecurity for humanitarian staff and equipment make it necessary to find a consensus on a common approach … to humanitarian projects,” he said.
Griffith’s four-member delegation, which arrived on Friday, met with Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, the head of the rebels’ political wing, the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), and other rebel officials including Bizima Karaha, who handles foreign relations.
The United Nations, which ceased activities in the east at the start of the rebellion last August, wants the rebels to create “conditions” to assure the safety of both local and international humanitarian staff and their equipment, Griffith said. He added he hopes the RCD will show “their good faith in returning materials seized” from UN agencies when they launched their uprising.
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