THE EU: The European Union is considering sending troops to back the beleaguered United Nations mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo and stabilise the east of the country, amid signs that the peace process is unravelling, from William Wallis in Nairobi.
Mr Louis Michel, Belgium's foreign minister, who was on a mission aimed at rallying regional heads of state behind Congo's fragile year-old transition government, told journalists yesterday that EU member-states were agreed on the "principles" of deployment. "But we have to be sure of the modalities," he said.
He was speaking in Kinshasa, the capital, as fighting flared again between renegade soldiers and troops loyal to President Joseph Kabila on the outskirts of the eastern town of Bukavu.
UN peacekeepers, stationed in Bukavu as part of a 10,800-strong multinational force in Congo, were unable to prevent the rebels from capturing the town last week after several days of fighting and amid scenes of looting and rape.
The fighting risks pitching the Great Lakes region back into war, only a year into a UN-backed power-sharing transition aimed at steering the vast, mineral-rich country towards elections.
Gen Laurent Nkunda, the commander of the renegade troops, has yet to spell out a clear agenda. But his uprising has played out against a strong undercurrent of separatist sentiment among some groups allied to neighbouring Rwanda in the east.
The fighting has also drawn support from those frustrated at their exclusion from the peace process or concerned they will be pursued for crimes committed during the previous five-year civil war.
The renegade troops left the town on Sunday, but in fresh violence, two UN peacekeepers were killed after their convoy was ambushed outside Goma, a border town some 120km to the north. - (Financial Times)