/ 16 December 2008

UN peacekeepers ‘dissatisfied’ with DRC mission

The commander of United Nations peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) said on Monday his troops were ”dissatisfied” with their mission because they are unable to protect civilians as they would like.

”Dissatisfaction is the feeling among everyone in the force with regard to the protection they would like to be able to provide,” said General Babacar Gaye in a statement sent to Agence France-Presse.

The United Nations mission in DRC, known as Monuc, is the UN’s largest peacekeeping operation, with 17 000 blue-helmet soldiers, but Gaye pointed out that it was an insufficient force in such a vast Central African nation, roughly the size of Western Europe.

Just more than 7 000 peacekeepers are currently deployed in the restive eastern province of Nord-Kivu, where government forces and allied militias have been battling rebel forces led by ethnic Tutsi ex-general Laurent Nkunda.

”The work that the blue helmets are doing right now is irreplaceable,” said Gaye, as the peacekeepers provide escorts for humanitarian aid to reach about 250 000 people displaced by the fighting.

But the UN peacekeepers have been criticised for not giving enough cover to civilians caught in the crossfire and rebels have often succeeded in blocking humanitarian efforts.

Just on Monday, armed men opened fire on the vehicle of an Italian humanitarian group killing a passenger and wounding the driver, about 60km north of Nord-Kivu’s capital, Goma, the UN said.

”An unknown group opened fire on the car of the Italian NGO, AVSI [Association of Volunteers for International Service], said Monuc military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Jean-Paul Dietrich.

”A passenger died at the scene and the driver, who was seriously wounded, was taken to the nearby hospital at Rutshuru,” managed by Médecins sans Frontières, he said.

The attack happened in a area under the control of Nkunda’s rebels, but Dietrich said the UN could not definitely say they were responsible for firing on the humanitarian group’s car.

A coalition of human rights groups, including Amnesty International, appealed Monday to the UN Security Council to enforce an embargo on the shipment of weapons to the armed groups in DRC.

In a statement received by Agence France-Presse in Kinshasa, the groups denounced ”the proliferation and the hijacking of arms and munitions used by the regular army and the police”.

They called on the international community to adopt measures to compensate for the inability of the Congolese forces to stop the flow of arms.

In a rare television address on Saturday, DRC President Joseph Kabila insisted the government was stepping up efforts to negotiate an end the conflict in Nord-Kivu.

Government representatives began meeting with rebels in Nairobi last week under the mediation of UN special envoy Olusegun Obasanjo, the former Nigerian president, but talks have been suspended until Wednesday. — Sapa-AFP