The U.N. Security Council hopes to vote this week on a French-drafted resolution that would boost the number of U.N. peacekeepers in the Congo to help avert a new war, council diplomats said on Monday.The resolution was drafted by the French delegation in response to U.N. warnings that recent fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo had forced a quarter of a million people to flee for their lives, sparking a new humanitarian catastrophe in the already war-ravaged region.
The requested increase in the size of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Congo, known by its French acronym MONUC, was based on a recommendation for a troop “surge” from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last month.The draft resolution, obtained in full by Reuters, has the council approving “a temporary increase of MONUC’s authorized military strength by up to 2,785 military personnel, and the strength of its formed police unit by up to 300 personnel.”
The increase would bring the maximum permitted number of troops and police deployed under MONUC, already the biggest U.N. peacekeeping force in the world, to just over 20,000 to cover a country roughly the size of western Europe.The resolution called on MONUC to use the extra troops to protect civilians and urged it to follow “robust rules of engagement” in the field.
SOURCED FROM REUTERS.
Filed under: AFRICAN NEWS, DRC | Tagged: AFRIAN NEWS, AFRICAN CRIME AND JUSTICE, DR CONGO.
