EU to send aid to Congo, mulls sending troops

The EU is ready to send humanitarian aid to civilians fleeing conflict in eastern Congo, but needs to consider further whether it will send European troops, France's foreign minister said yesterday.

Bernard Kouchner said France's proposal this week that the EU send up to 1,500 troops to support hard-pressed UN peacekeepers in Democratic Republic of Congo had been only a suggestion, which was being consulted with all EU members.

France holds the rotating EU presidency and Kouchner, accompanied by British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, arrived in Congo's capital Kinshasa yesterday on a mission to try to secure peace in the violence-plagued east of the country.

An offensive by Tutsi rebels loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda, and subsequent killings and looting by Congolese army troops, have driven tens of thousands of civilians from their homes in North Kivu province on the border with Rwanda.

Although a ceasefire declared by Nkunda appears to be holding, foreign relief workers have described the humanitarian situation in North Kivu as "catastrophic", and have called on the international community to help with aid and security there.

After meeting Congolese President Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa, Kouchner told reporters EU member states which met in Brussels on Friday to discuss the Congo situation were agreed on the idea of a European humanitarian operation for North Kivu.

"They've said it can certainly be done in humanitarian terms," he said. But he added the option of sending troops "must be studied".

The world's largest United Nations peacekeeping force, 17,000-strong, is deployed in Congo, but has been badly stretched by rebel and militia violence on several fronts and was not able to halt Nkunda's rapid advance in the east.

Britain's Miliband told Reuters, "Nothing has been ruled out in terms of European engagement, but at this stage the military force comes from the UN, the political process needs to come from the parties on the ground, and our role is to help that."

In London, Foreign Office minister Mark Malloch-Brown told BBC Radio the EU would send troops to Congo only as a last resort if the existing UN force needed to be reinforced and diplomatic peace efforts failed.

He said the EU would not "stand back and watch violence erupt".

Kouchner and Miliband will later travel from Congo to neighbouring Rwanda for talks with President Paul Kagame.

Congo and Rwanda have accused each other of backing rebel groups involved in the eastern Congo violence.

At talks in Kinshasa and Kigali on Friday, EU Development and Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Louis Michel obtained the agreement of Kabila and Kagame to meet at a summmit to discuss the conflict.