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Peacekeepers can't protect all in eastern Congo-UN

by (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2010. Click For Restrictions. http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Friday, 15 October 2010 04:58 GMT

* Oxfam: MONUSCO should do more to protect against LRA

* DRC army sees U.N. peacekeepers as "obstacle" - official

By Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Without more troops and resources, the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo will never be able to protect all people in the vast nation&${esc.hash}39;s turbulent east, a senior U.N. official said on Friday.

In a report to the U.N. Security Council, Roger Meece, the head of the 20,000-strong MONUSCO peacekeeping force in the DRC, also said that over 15,000 people were raped in the eastern part of the country in 2009.

"Armed groups operate in many widely dispersed areas, not only in proximity to villages and towns but indeed are often intermixed with the civilian population," Meece told the 15-nation council.

"In this vast area, larger than Afghanistan, it is not possible for MONUSCO to ensure full protection for all civilians," he said. "To approach this goal would require vastly greater force levels and resources."

But the international aid organization Oxfam said that MONUSCO, the biggest U.N. force in the world, can and should do more to protect civilians in the DRC, especially wherever Uganda&${esc.hash}39;s Lord&${esc.hash}39;s Resistance Army were operating.

The feared Ugandan guerrillas are known to cut the lips and ears off their victims and forcibly recruit children.

"MONUSCO is failing tens of thousands of people in urgent need of protection and assistance," said Marcel Stoessel, the head of Oxfam in the DRC.

"The LRA has killed and abducted more people than any other armed group in Congo, yet the resources the U.N. allocates to protecting civilians in the affected areas remain wholly inadequate," he said. "The U.N. Security Council should insist on immediate redeployment of peacekeepers."

U.N. "TO BE AVOIDED"

Meece touched briefly on the LRA in his speech to the council, saying it was "an ongoing priority" for MONUSCO and that U.N. peacekeepers would support regional efforts to deal with the guerrillas .

Seven years after a 1998-2003 war that killed over five million people, the DRC is still plagued by insecurity. Rwandan Hutu and local Mai Mai militias are at large in its mineral-rich east and the LRA operates in the north.

Uganda says that the LRA has been moving across the porous border between Sudan&${esc.hash}39;s South Darfur state and the Central African Republic.

Meece made clear there were tensions between the Congolese FARDC army and MONUSCO. While MONUSCO is there to support the FARDC, the DRC&${esc.hash}39;s army has increasingly come to view collaboration with MONUSCO as "an obstacle to be avoided," he said.

"This has led to an increase in FARDC unilateral operations," Meece said.

Margot Wallstrom, the U.N.&${esc.hash}39;s special envoy for sexual violence in armed conflict, told the Security Council on Thursday that DRC soldiers deployed to an area where hundreds of people were raped by Rwandan Hutu forces in early August may have committed similar crimes after they arrived there.

"There is already some information from MONUSCO peacekeepers on the ground that rapes, killings and looting have been perpetrated by FARDC soldiers," she said.

Wallstrom also called for Council members to impose sanctions on Rwandan Hutu rebels believed to be behind the mass rapes in late July and early August. [ID:nN14257108] (Editing by Paul Simao)

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