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26 Jun 2003 05:52:00 GMT
By Evelyn Leopold
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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The Security Council is expected on Thursday to extend U.N. peacekeepers in the Congo for 30 days to give the United States more time to decide whether to approve increasing the force and giving it a more robust mandate in the violent eastern part of the country.
The council's vote on the stopgap measure was necessary before the mandate of the force expires on June 30. In the interim, negotiations continue on Secretary-General Kofi Annan's call to beef up the U.N. force before French troops leave northeastern Congo.
On May 30, the council authorized the deployment of a French-led force of 1,400 to Bunia in the Ituri region in the northeast to help stem tribal violence and massacres. They are authorized to shoot to kill and are to secure the airport and protect displaced people.
Under the current operation, U.N. troops in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have a right to use force in self-defense and to protect U.N. facilities. New proposals would give U.N. peacekeepers, to be deployed in Ituri as well as the Kivu region, similar rights as the French-led force.
A draft resolution, drawn up by France and backed by most other council nations, would also allow Annan to increase the ceiling of the U.N. force from 8,700 to 10,800 so some 3,800 troops could be deployed in the east.
The draft, obtained by Reuters, would also impose an arms embargo in the Kivu and Ituri districts, although this would be nearly impossible to enforce.
Violence in Bunia between the Hema and Lendu tribes has resulted in more than 500 deaths as well as mutilations, rape and other atrocities since the beginning of May.
Amnesty International says the fighting, spurred at first by Ugandan troops, has cost 50,000 lives since June 1999 and forced about 500,000 to flee their homes.
U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said last week that Washington, which is billed for more than 25 percent of U.N. peacekeeping costs, was open to Bangladeshi soldiers replacing the French force but hesitated in increasing the overall number of troops.
"Our view is that fundamentally no amount of peacekeeping forces are going to be able to resolve this situation if there isn't the political will both in the Congo and in the neighboring countries to achieve a satisfactory political outcome," he told reporters.
"The Congo is just too large a country to be able to hope or think that a large foreign intervention can make that much of a difference over the long-term," Negroponte said.
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