Global Policy Forum

By Barbara Crossette

United Nations - African governments, unable to bring about a cease-fire in the widening war in eastern Congo, want the United Nations to take on the job of disarming combatants, diplomats from the region say. They also want a peacekeeping force much larger than the 5,537-member mission now being proposed in an American-sponsored Security Council resolution.

"We are now in danger of losing everything if there is no provision to have these armed groups disarmed," said Dumisani Kumalo, South Africa's representative to the United Nations. "Without the threat of being disarmed by force, they'll never lay down arms. This whole thing can unravel, and the United Nations will get blamed."

The United Nations is likely to ask the South Africans, who consider themselves neutral in a war that has involved at least half a dozen nations, to provide half the planned armed force -- two of four battalions of 250 soldiers each. That is a total of 1,000 armed troops to protect 500 military observers and a support staff of about 4,000 medical, administrative and service personnel scattered around a country one-third the size of the United States.

African diplomats say the size of the force should be reconsidered, but have made no specific proposals for increasing the number of troops.

Diplomats say that Richard C. Holbrooke, the American representative, who has to persuade Congress to pay the American share of the mission, demanded an exact number of people to be deployed, which accounts for the unusually precise figure of 5,537. The proposed mission carries a start-up cost of $41 million, with no estimates of the amount it would eventually cost. The United States is billed 31 percent of any peacekeeping operation.

The armed battalions would not be authorized to disarm fighters or otherwise involve themselves in the war, which pits rebels allied with Rwanda and Uganda against forces fielded or backed by Congo's president, Laurent Kabila.

United Nations officials and American diplomats agree that combatants should be disarmed only after fighting has stopped and peacekeepers can begin to separate the forces. By then, United Nations officials and Security Council members say, they hope that political talks between Mr. Kabila and his enemies will have begun.

Fighting shows no sign of receding, however, despite a peace agreement signed last July in Lusaka, Zambia, by nations whose troops are involved in the fighting -- though not by most of the unofficial armies on both sides. Today, in Geneva, a spokesman for the United Nations high commissioner for refugees said that more people fled Congo for Tanzania this week.

The refugees say they are being dislodged from looted homes as rebels have disrupted life in Sud-Kivu province.

Africans may agree on the need for disarmament, but they do not agree on which forces must be dealt with first, and where they should be moved once disarmed. One factor complicating deliberations here is the fact that sub-Saharan Africa's lone voice on the Security Council this year belongs to Namibia, which has sent troops to back Mr. Kabila.

Security Council members say that as daily negotiations proceed on sending peacekeepers to Congo, the Rwandan and Ugandan governments are asking that the United Nations make a priority of disarming the Hutu Interahamwe militias and soldiers from the former Hutu-led army of Rwanda still in Congo, where they were driven after a Tutsi-led army seized power in Rwanda in 1994. The Hutu militias in particular include many fighters thought to be involved in the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Tutsi and their moderate Hutu defenders in April 1994.

Some African diplomats say that Mr. Kabila is recruiting the Interahamwe and former army troops, who are then trained by Zimbabwean officers fighting for the Congo president. This raises fears that the Hutu forces might become too powerful in Congo. Should the Hutu gain the upper hand in Congo, said Joseph W. Mutaboba, Rwanda's representative, it would be "the worst nightmare" for the Rwandans.

On his side, Mr. Kabila is demanding that the United Nations disarm rebel groups backed by Rwanda and Uganda. He describes the fighting as not a civil war but an attempt to repel an invasion.

Complicating diplomatic and peacekeeping efforts are Mr. Kabila's objections to the presence of South Africans in Congo. He accuses them of siding with Rwanda, which the South Africans deny. South Africa faces the delicate task of dealing with Rwanda while trying not to increase tensions with its neighbors, Zimbabwe and Namibia, which back Mr. Kabila.