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Congo Chafes at UN Council Statement's FDLR
Reference, Diaz Puts Valencia Base in Play?
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
October 29 -- With heavy weapons
fire flying over the
Congolese - Rwanda border, the UN Security Council on
Wednesday night adopted a Presidential Statement expressing its
concern.
Afterwards, the charge d'affaires of the Congolese Mission to the UN
expressed
displeasure at the portion of the statement which called on the
"government of the DRC to take effective steps to ensure that there is
no
cooperation between elements of the FARDC [the Congolese army] and the
FDLR"
[Hutu militias]. "How could we be helping
those people?" he asked Inner City Press in the hallway. How indeed.
At the
Council stakeout, UN Peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy confirmed that
bombs are
going both ways over the border, but wouldn't or couldn't say who had
started
it. Likewise when Inner City Press asked him about the death of a
civilian
protester of MONUC, he said it is still being investigated. He
confirmed that
the MONUC facility in Kibumba was hit by mortar fire. As to an Indian
peacekeeping officer being injured, reported in the Indian press, he
said he
hadn't heard of it.
The idea,
he said, was to bring MONUC peacekeepers from elsewhere in the Congo to
Goma,
where MONUC currently has 800 soldiers.
Inner City Press asked for confirmation that
Congolese president Kabila
has asked the international community, through MONUC, for a non-UN
force like
the Artemis team dispatched to Bunia in Ituri in 2003.
Yes, Le Roy said, Kabila has made that
request.
But while
French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner on Wednesday said France was
interested in sending troups, later the European Union's Solana shot
down the
idea. Perhaps it can be revived at a meeting of EU ministers slated for
Brussels this coming Monday.
UN's Ban welcomes Gen. Diaz last month -
sudden retreat like Valencia
base not shown
People
continued to marvel on Wednesday at the Spanish General Vicente Diaz de
Villegas for leaving his
post. It's not no pasaran, said one wag,
it's "yo me fui," I left.
Some wondered if Diaz leaving MONUC and DPKO in the lurch will not or
should
not hurt Spain's chance of getting the proposal peacekeeping
information
technology base
mis-promised to Valencia.
While the UN's Alan Doss on Tuesday said he'd barely
spoken with Diaz
before he left, the Spanish counter-talk at the UN was that Diaz
complained of
Doss trying to micro-manage military operations. Whoever's
been in charge has some explaining
to do.
Watch this site, and this Oct. 2 debate, on
UN, bailout, MDGs
and this October 17 debate, on
Security Council and Obama and the UN.
* * *
These
reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here
for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali
National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
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