United Nations | Wednesday
THE Security Council have begun to study a proposal to send more UN peacekeepers to the Democratic Republic of Congo and prepare them for new tasks such as policing after foreign armies withdraw.
The proposal came in a report by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan which said the peacekeeping force, known by the French acronym Monuc, would need an extra 2,500 military personnel during a yearlong transition phase, on top of the 2,366 currently deployed.
France submitted a draft resolution to the council on Tuesday to extend the peacekeepers’ mandate for 12 months instead of the customary six.
The council president, Anwarul Chowdhury of Bangladesh, said he expected a vote on the draft by Friday, when Monucs current mandate expires. A public debate is scheduled for Wednesday.
The resolution, if adopted, would keep the number of peacekeepers capped at 5_537 officers and men, as recommended by Annan.
The resolution also endorsed a revised concept of peacekeeping operations which, Annan said, would include a considerable expansion of civilian components such as police.
In his report, sent to the council on Monday, Annan said he shared ”the same cautious optimism” about the prospects for peace as members of the council who visited central Africa last month.
Annan said plans drawn up by the belligerents for the withdrawal of foreign forces and for the disarmament and demobilisation of rebels did not justify increasing the ceiling on peacekeepers.
But in Brussels, the International Crisis Group urged the council to ”send a strong signal of support for the process of disarmament in the Congo and mandate the UN mission to take the lead in coordinating it.”
In a statement on Tuesday, the group warned armed Hutu rebels were reportedly moving east towards the Kivu provinces of DRC and to Burundi, ”leading to an escalation of violence in this area.”
”If nothing is done, the war will likely resume either through an explosion in the Kivus or a reversal of the momentum on disengagement,” the group said.
In his report, Annan said he felt ”the same sense of foreboding with respect to the precarious situation in Burundi” as the 12 council members who visited Africa’s war-torn Great Lakes region.
The team, led by Jean-David Levitte, French ambassador to the United Nations, said on their return that they had been ”struck by the complexity and intractability of the situation in Burundi,” where more than 200,000 people — out of a population of 6,4-million — have died in eight years of civil war.
The council’s tour included Angola, an ally of the Congolese government, and Rwanda and Uganda, which support rebels opposed to it.
Those three countries, along with Zimbabwe and Namibia, which also have troops on the government side, are signatories to a ceasefire agreement signed in July 1999 in the Zambian capital, Lusaka. – AFP
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