UN Congo envoy asks for more resources to protect civilians

Apr 9, 2009, 21:44 GMT

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.