The Central African Republic has stopped burning villages and killing hundreds of civilians in the north, a United Nations investigator said today.
Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur, said it was too soon to say whether President Francois Bozize had definitively reined in security forces, however.
Mr Alston, in a statement issued after a week-long visit, also called on the government to begin prosecuting soldiers responsible for the killings, which ran from 2005 to mid-2007, and to end the torture and executions of suspects.
"Up until very recently, government forces were burning entire villages to the ground and summarily executing large numbers of people," Mr Alston said. The number of executions carried out by the armed forces in the north had fallen dramatically in the past six months, but had not ceased, he added.
Mr Bozize, who seized power in 2003 and won elections two years later, has taken significant steps to end abuses by his troops, visiting burned villages in the northwest and ordering that "such scorched earth tactics must end," according to the envoy.
"But while President Bozize has shown that he has the power to prevent the military from committing human rights abuses, it is still too early to conclude that the government has definitively turned a new page," Mr Alston said.
A European Union force of 3,500-plus troops, including over 400 Irish personnel, is to be deployed in Chad and CAR in coming weeks.