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Europe to help east Congo, but cool on troops
Sun Nov 2, 2008 2:05am EST
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By Hez Holland
KIBATI, Congo (Reuters) - Two European ministers promised help on Saturday to desperate refugees who have fled fighting in east Congo, but played down the idea of the European Union sending troops there to protect civilians.
People driven from their homes mobbed French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and his British counterpart David Miliband at a camp in Democratic Republic of Congo's North Kivu province, where a recent rebel offensive triggered a humanitarian crisis.
The ministers were on a mission to gauge what aid the EU could give to Congo's government and hard-pressed United Nations peacekeepers and foreign aid workers struggling to help tens of thousands of starving, thirsty and exhausted people.
France, which holds the rotating EU presidency, this week proposed the idea of the bloc sending up to 1,500 troops to Congo to support the 17,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission there and to help deliver increased humanitarian assistance.
But while Kouchner and Miliband both said a humanitarian operation was on the cards, they indicated the option of an EU military deployment, which has encountered resistance from some European member states, was only under study.
"I don't think we're here to discuss an EU force. We're here to discuss the humanitarian situation," Miliband said at Kibati, 20 km (12 miles) north of North Kivu provincial capital Goma.
Miliband and Kouchner, who earlier met Congolese President Joseph Kabila, traveled on to neighboring Rwanda to lobby President Paul Kagame's government to support a lasting peace deal in North Kivu. Congo and Rwanda have accused each other of backing rival rebel groups.
The recent offensive by Tutsi rebels loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda, and killings and looting by Congolese army troops, have created what foreign relief workers call a catastrophic situation in North Kivu.
But a ceasefire declared by Nkunda seemed to be holding.
While Miliband and Kouchner pledged more European aid, refugees said what they really needed was more security.
"We only want to return home. Food isn't a solution," refugee Emelie Manigera said at Kibati.
PEACE SUMMIT PLANNED
An estimated one million people have been forced from their homes in North Kivu by two years of violence that has persisted despite the end of a 1998-2003 war in the vast, former Belgian colony, rich in copper, cobalt, gold and diamonds.
The world's largest U.N. peacekeeping force is deployed in Congo but has been badly stretched by rebel and militia violence and was unable to halt Nkunda's rapid advance in the east.
In a separate attack in the north of the country, Ugandan rebel group the Lord's Resistance Army raided the town of Dungu, near Congo's border with Sudan, the United Nations said. Continued...
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