Congo calls for UN troop pull-out in 2011

DEMOCRATIC Republic of Congo called yesterday for all UN troops to pull out in 2011, a move which human rights groups say would spell disaster for civilians caught up in conflict there. Nearly 22,000 peacekeepers with the United Nations' MONUC force are deployed throughout the country, maintaining a UN presence launched in 1999 when a six-year war drew in neighbouring countries and claimed an estimated five million lives.

"Senior officials of the UN have been informed of the government's wish to see the total withdrawal of MONUC from DRC during 2011," Information Minister Lambert Mende told reporters. UN peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said on a recent visit to Congo that a new MONUC mandate due in June would include plans for a withdrawal, but said no date had been agreed. "We are waiting for the Secretary General to give his report to the Security Council to see what final decision will be taken," a MONUC spokesman said yesterday. Conflict still rages in the east of the country, where UN troops are backing government operations to oust Rwandan Hutu rebels, the FDLR. Human rights groups say massacres, rape, looting and other attacks on civilians continue in the east, and that armed ex-rebel groups control artisanal mining of lucrative tin and tantalum, used in telephones and camera lenses. Lobby group Global Witness said yesterday a UN pull-out should be conditional on demilitarisation of these mines. "The security and human rights situation has remained dire over the past year," said Tawanda Hondora, deputy director of rights group Amnesty International's Africa programme. Reuters