New York - The United Nations envoy to the Democratic
Republic of Congo told the UN Security Council on Thursday that
resources were sorely lacking to protect civilians from armed rebels
in the war-torn country.
Alan Doss, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's special
representative and the head of the UN peacekeeping mission (MONUC) in
Congo, said 18 additional helicopters were needed, without which the
peacekeeping force's ability to respond quickly to emergencies was
severely hampered.
The 15-member council voiced its concerns over massive human
rights violations by armed groups. Doss said some 1,100 people have
been killed by the rebels since December, hundreds abducted and
200,000 uprooted by the violence.
Rebel groups have launched 'gruesome reprisal attacks' following
joint military operations between Congolese forces, Ugandan troops
and the Sudan People's Liberation Army, he said.
The envoy also said it was important for the council to continue
to pressure the Forces Democratiques pour la Liberation du Rwanda
(FDLR), a group of rebels who fled across the border during the 1994
Rwandan genocide and regrouped.
MONUC currently has much of its 17,000 forces employed in the
north-eastern provinces of South Kivu and North Kivu, where attacks
by Tutsi rebels last year forced 250,000 to flee. It's the UN's
largest peace-keeping mission.
MONUC has long complained it lacks resources in the sprawling,
mineral-rich Central African nation, which is roughly the size of
western Europe.
The UN Security Council authorized another 3,000 troops, but so
far governments have been reticent to promise the necessary soldiers.
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