KINSHASA, Congo — The U.N. Security Council and the leaders of troubled Congo on Tuesday will discuss plans to reform the country’s crumbling army and the phased withdrawal of U.N. peacekeepers, the top U.N. official in Congo said.
KINSHASA, Congo — The U.N. Security Council and the leaders of troubled Congo on Tuesday will discuss plans to reform the country’s crumbling army and the phased withdrawal of U.N. peacekeepers, the top U.N. official in Congo said. Alan Doss said the meeting will focus on a conditional plan to reduce its roughly 16,500-strong peacekeeping mission and hand over full military control of Congo to the Congolese army by 2011. Currently the underpaid and ill-disciplined army has a dismal reputation for raping and murdering the civilians it is meant to protect. Doss says the current U.N. peacekeeping force will first increase by 3,000 troops and then try to start reducing by 2010. "I think this is prudent planning. This mission has been here 10 years. I think after 10 years, it is normal to ask some questions," Doss told a breakfast briefing for the Security Council. "We are not talking about withdrawing, we are talking about a drawdown." Congo’s Prime Minister Adolphe Muzito told the Security Council he would like the U.N. to concentrate more forces in dangerous areas of the country but acknowledged the government should be doing more to bring stability to Congo. "The suffering of our people remains. Peace is yet to be fulfilled. Our duty is to do more, to do better and perhaps to do differently," Muzito said. Congo has been wracked by conflict since genocidal forces from Rwanda fled into its forested mountains 15 years ago. At its height, the conflict in eastern Congo drew in half a dozen of the country’s neighbors, each greedy for a share of the region’s rich mineral resources. A peace deal in 2003 reduced the fighting, but rebel groups still lurk in the forests, attacking villages and mutilating and killing civilians. ______ Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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