Ban Ki-moon urges Congo to seize chance

UN chief Ban Ki-moon yesterday met Congolese President Joseph Kabila and urged steps to buttress peace in the country's east after a successful military offensive against Rwandan Hutu rebels.

Ban, who arrived early yesterday in the Democratic Republic of Congo, met Kabila in northeastern Kisangani, Ban's spokesman Yves Sorokobi told AFP.

"The recent developments have offered an opportunity to the Congolese authorities as well as to MONUC (the UN peacekeeping mission in the country) to reinforce our commitment" in the east, he told Kabila, according to Sorokobi.

The secretary general also called on the authorities to seize the recent calm to "reinforce the authority of the state and ensure a more efficient way of protecting civilians."

A "more robust" MONUC presence will allow the country to "secure the gains" in the long term of a recent joint Rwandan-Congolese operation against Hutu rebels, Ban added, although he did not elaborate.

Ban later travelled to Goma, capital of the eastern Nord-Kivu province, where an offensive by renegade Tutsi general Laurent Nkunda against the Congolese army led to a fresh outbreak of unrest last August.

Following the unrest, which displaced more than a quarter of a million people and sparked a humanitarian crisis, Rwanda and Congo launched a joint operation on January 20 against Hutu rebels in the province.

Rwandan forces left Congo this week following the successful operation against the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) - whose members include perpetrators of Rwanda's 1994 genocide mainly against minority Tutsis.

Officials have said 153 rebels and eight alliance soldiers were killed in the operation.

One of the earliest results of the operation was the capture of Nkunda on January 22 in neighbouring Rwanda.