2,000 Congolese crossed Ugandan border into Ishasha, Kanungu Nov 11 bringing total number of Congolese refugees who fled into Uganda to over 12,000

See Uganda Watch Sunday, November 16, 2008: - UNHCR: Situation report No. 2 - Congolese refugee influx into Uganda 13 November 2008.

DR Congo: LRA attacks on city of Dungu 1 & 2 Nov 2008 - Entire population fled says UN's OCHA Situation Report No. 1, 05 Nov 2008

From United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) 05 Nov 2008 (via ReliefWeb)

DR Congo: Dungu, Orientale Province Situation Report No. 1, 05 Nov 2008

- LRA Attacks on the city of Dungu on 1 and 2 November

- Entire population has fled Dungu

- Evacuation of humanitarian actors, difficult access to IDPs

Political and security context

Attacks and exactions

Since 17 September, in the territory of Dungu in Orientale Province, in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of Congo, civilians have been victims of violence perpetrated by armed groups suspected to be Ugandan rebels of Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Attacks and exactions against the civilian population (killings, lootings, attacks and kidnappings) have targeted several villages including those of Bangadi, Kana, Napopo, Li-Mayi, Nduga, Kpaika, Duru et Dungu. The attacks have caused casualties (at least 20 dead civilians since 19 October) and an increasing number of people were kidnapped by the rebels.

During the last weeks, Dungu town and the localities of Ngilima and Bangadi observed increasing activities of self-defence groups aiming to protect the population from LRA attacks.

Attacks on Dungu on 1 and 2 November

In the night of 31 October 31 to 01 November, around one hundred armed men infiltrated the city centre of Dungu on canoes. The previous day, they had attacked the villages of Nagonyo (20km N of Dungu), Kakalika (13km N of Dungu) and Nakofo (14km N of Dungu), causing the displacement of the population to the city of Dungu. Starting on 4 a.m., the rebels attacked FARDC positions in Dungu. When the rebels withdrew in the late morning hours, they abducted about 50 persons including 30 children, mostly girls. At least one civilian was killed during the fighting. On the afternoon of 2 November, another clash between FARDC and LRA occurred in a northern neighbourhood of Dungu, but the FARDC forces succeeded to have the LRA retreat. On 3 November, 12 hostages kidnapped on 1 November were found 12 km east of Dungu on the road to Faradje.

Departure of humanitarian actors

Following the first attack on Dungu, the staff of international NGOs left the town, either by land or by air. Four UN staff were evacuated by MONUC and brought to the MONUC base in Dungu. As of today, the humanitarian actors are not able to return to Dungu due to the prevailing insecurity.

Access and humanitarian space

Apart from the current inaccessibility of Dungu, humanitarian access in Dungu territory is already considerably restricted by other factors :

- Lack of security on the road Dungu-Duru-Bitima makes it inaccessible for humanitarians, as well as the delivering of assistance by land from South Sudan and/or Uganda via Yambio (South Sudan)-Bitima (DRC).

- Insecurity on the road Dungu-Ngilima-Bangadi impedes humanitarians to assess the situation in Ngilima and Bangadi, prior to any assistance.

- Moreover, the poor state of roads prevents humanitarians to move south of Dungu. In the rainy season, only bicycles and motorbikes can use the road to the southern localities.

Population movements

- The exactions perpetrated in different villages have caused massive population displacements. A vast area of 10 000 sq km, from the western edge of Garamba National Park in the western boundary of Mbomu (200 km) and the border with Sudan on the axis Dungu-Ngilima-Bangadi (50 km) has been depopulated.

- Before the attack on Dungu, estimates indicated 25 826 IDPs (5 166 households), without taking into account several thousands of IDPs who had arrived in Dungu from further north on October 31.

- Tens of thousands people were forced to flee their villages and to take refuge, in the south of the territory and the localities of Ngilima (45km NW of Dungu) and Bangadi (125km NW of Dungu), in Niangara territory, and in South Sudan (5 000, according to UNHCR).

- The attack on Dungu has caused the displacement of the entire population of the city (± 57 000), plus 6 000 IDPs, identified by Solidartiés/RRM, and about 5 000 IDPs who had just arrived from the northern axis. This population now is mainly concentrated in an area between 10 and 35 km south of Dungu, waiting for further developments. First timid returns have been indicated since 3 November.

Needs to meet and humanitarian response

Prior to the attack on Dungu, most IDPs in Dungu had found refuge in host families which had difficulties in providing enough food. Food supplies in Dungu were getting short since the main supply road to Bangadi is in a very bad shape and has become unsafe.

A humanitarian NGO has undertaken a multisectorial assessment in the city of Dungu in order to assess the situation of IPDs and their needs, based on vulnerability criteria in different sectors (shelter, NFI, watsan, emergency education, health, food security).

Following this evaluation, the humanitarian organizations (many NGOs and UN agencies) started to prepare activities (MSF-Swiss, SOLIDARITES, MEDAIR, WFP, LWF, CARITAS). At the time of the attack on the city, they were only awaiting the delivery of assistance to Dungu to start their operations. MSF-Swiss and MEDAIR had already transported medical equipment to Dungu.

Ongoing activities:

- Health: INGO MEDAIR-Isiro distributed medical supplies to eight health centers in Dungu territory. INGO LWF prepared the construction of 300 family latrines for the health zones in Dungu and Doruma.

- Health: MSF-Swiss received a humanitarian cargo for IDPs in Bangadi, Ngilima and surroundings (medicines, cold chain equipment for vaccination, equipments for a mobile clinic and water supply, NFI). However, parts of the population have already moved towards Niangara which is inaccessible by road since recent LRA attacks around Bangadi.

- Protection: UNICEF has set up four clusters: NFI and Watsan with Caritas as focal point, Education with APEC as focal point, assisted by AIDER, and Child Protection with CDJP as focal point. MEDAIR acts as Health focal point. In October, UNHCR organised trainings, in collaboration with UNICEF and OCHA, to sensitize 500 FARDC officers on Humanitarian principles, International Humanitarian Law, child protection and the new law on sexual violence.

For more information: http://www.rdc-humanitaire.net

Contacts:

- Jean-Charles Dupin, Chef de Bureau OCHA à Bunia, dupin@un.org, Tél. : +243 819 820 364

- Noel Tsekouras, Desk Officer OCHA New York, tsekouras@un.org, Tél.: + 1 917 367 93 67

- Christophe Illemassene, Public Information Manager, illemassene@un.org, Tél.: +243 819 889 195

- Ivo Brandau, Chargé d'information OCHA-RDC, brandau@un.org, Tél. : + 243 815 142 956

Attacks by Ugandan LRA terrorists in DR Congo calls for stronger UN troop presence - SUDAN: LRA terrorists put DRC civilians to flight

November 14, 2008 (VOA) Washington, DC, report by Howard Lesser - Attacks by Ugandan Rebels in DRC Draw Calls for Stronger UN Troop Presence:

Four human rights groups are urging the UN Security Council to dispatch additional peacekeepers to the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Orientale province to help the Congolese army contain attacks by Ugandan rebels. Human Rights Watch, Resolve Uganda, the Justice and Peace Commission of Congo’s Dungu/Doruma, and the Enough Project are also asking Britain, the United States, and countries near the DRC to pursue an arrest strategy against Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel leader General Joseph Kony and his followers, who are wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes.

In Washington, the Enough Project’s Africa Advocacy Director Colin Thomas-Jensen said the attacks have escalated in the past two months and are straining the mandate of a 17-thousand troop UN peacekeeping force, known by its acronym MONUC, which has been trying to curb tensions in Congo’s neighboring North Kivu Province.

“The patterns that we’re seeing, the hit-and-run attacks on large towns that have military bases, like the town of Dungu, we think it’s part of a broader plan by the Lord’s Resistance Army to increase their ranks, to bolster their military capacity for ultimately what could be another round of conflict in region,” observed Thomas-Jensen.

Throughout the Juba peace process between Ugandan rebels and the Kampala government which took place in southern Sudan, LRA negotiators have offered and then declined to sign a final agreement to end more than 20 years of insurgency in northern Uganda. The Enough Project’s Thomas-Jensen says that this week’s most current hints that General Kony will go ahead and sign the accord might counteract the peace process and complicate the insurgency even more.

“It could actually lead to a very complicated situation, one in which Kony might actually sign a deal but then not come out of the bush. And then what do you have? You have a signed peace deal, but the rebellion remains ensconced in a national park across the border. And what does that do for any sort of military options that might be on the table? What does it do for demobilization because he signed a peace deal, but they’re still in the bush? So I think what we’re likely going to see at the end of the month is a continuation of the status quo. I don’t think we’re going to see much of a change. But if he does sign, it does alter the situation and make it somewhat more complicated,” he noted.

Thomas-Jensen says there are multiple reasons why the human rights organizations are pushing for Washington, London and Congo’s neighbors to step up the pressure to prosecute the rebels.

“First and foremost, the threat that the LRA poses to civilians, this is one of the most bitter insurgencies of all time in terms of its ability to cause terror and displace civilians at one-point-seven million Ugandans displaced by just a couple of thousand LRA fighters. Also, I think you have to put the issue of the LRA in the context of our never-ending quest for international justice. Joseph Kony is an indicted war criminal, indicted by the International Criminal Court along with four of his cohorts, two of which are now deceased. And the fact that these warrants were issued but there was no plan by the international community to execute the warrants I think speaks volumes about the gap between the rhetoric on international justice and the action,” he said.

Following Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s return to New York from last weekend’s emergency summit on the troubled Great Lakes region in Nairobi, Kenya, discussions intensified at UN headquarters as the Secretary General pressed for a ceasefire in North Kivu province, northwest of Orientale. Alan Doss, the UN chief’s special representative for Congo appealed in early October for reinforcements for MONUC, and security council consideration remains under discussion. In August, 150 current MONUC peacekeepers were dispatched to neighboring Orientale to protect civilians and help Congolese troops contain the LRA. But six DRC army deaths and three rebel fatalities in October have prompted the four human rights organizations to press for additional UN peacekeepers. Thomas-Jensen says it’s a matter for the security council urgently to sort out the priorities.

“The situation we’re seeing right now in the Congo is one that has the potential to spiral out of control pretty dramatically, and one that demands a big response, both diplomatically, but also in the immediate term militarily. I do think that there does need to be an additional deployment of troops in the Kivus. But the risk in neglecting what is a very serious and increasingly violent insurgency by the LRA in Garamba National Park, I think the risk you run in not addressing that is that we’ll have to be three, four, five, six months down the road dealing with yet another massive crisis that we’ve allowed to spill out of control,” he warned.

- - -

SUDAN: LRA rebels put Congo civilians to flight
October 22, 2008 IRIN report (via borglobe.com):

Photo: DRC refugees who fled LRA attacks registering with UNHCR officials in Gangura, Southern Sudan (Peter Martell/IRIN)

YAMBIO, 22 October 2008 (IRIN) - The recent attack on Dungu town in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo by the Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) occurred on a quiet morning, displaced civilians said.

"We were in the fields working, when the warning went out that they were coming with guns," Aneshi Sheroze, a 22-year old farmer, explained.

"We ran back, but they were already killing and burning our houses, and then the Catholic mission."

The northern Ugandan insurgents, now based in remote Congolese jungle hideouts, then dragged away school children, binding their hands tightly together.

"They destroyed our homes and took the children all away," Sheroze said, recounting the attack as he queued to register with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in the southern Sudanese town of Yambio.

The attack sent the villagers trekking some 55km through thick jungle to the Sudan border, avoiding roads for fear of running into other rebel units. Sheroze carried his two young children.

Eventually, they sought shelter in the village of Gangura, some 13km inside Sudan.

The attack, the villagers told IRIN, was part of a series of raids launched by the rebel army, and marks a return to its violent trademark attacks and mass abductions following a period of largely relative calm during on-and-off peace talks.

"The LRA have raided us before for food, but this time they were killing, and destroying our grain stores," said Joyce, another Democratic Republic of Congo refugee.

Observers fear the attacks have largely sunk hopes that LRA commander Joseph Kony could sign a long-delayed peace deal hammered out in three years of negotiations.

They've also sparked fears that the rebels are now recruiting for a renewed offensive in what is already one of Africa's longest conflicts.

A preliminary report released by the UN Mission in Congo (MONUC) following a visit to the burnt villages accused the LRA of brutal attacks.

"In all localities that suffered attacks, the LRA elements conducted a campaign of killing, systematic abduction of children, and burning of almost all houses," the report reads.



Photo: The LRA, according to the refugees, destroyed homes and took the children away (Peter Martell/IRIN)

Heavy burden

Some 4,000 refugees have fled to south Sudan according to UNHCR, but many more thousands have been displaced within the DRC. Several hundred are within southern Sudan, where the rebels also raided.

The latest violence, officials in Southern Sudan said, has put a heavy burden on the southern state of Western Equatoria, which is already struggling to reintegrate its own people returning after being displaced in Sudan's civil war. That war ended in a peace deal three years ago.

"We have refugees from the DR Congo, displaced southern Sudanese and Sudanese who have recently returned after the war," said Lexson Wali Amozai, director of the Southern Sudan Refugee and Rehabilitation Commission in Western Equatoria

"We have increased security, but many are very scared, and they need long term humanitarian assistance."

Kony and his top commanders, who head an army accused of massacring and mutilating thousands, are wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on war crimes charges.

Thousands of people, mainly in northern Uganda, have died in more than two decades of the LRA's insurgency, while nearly two million were forced from their homes at the height of the conflict.

Kony began battling the Ugandan government in 1988 for what he said was the marginalisation of northern Uganda, but his army was later driven first into Southern Sudan, then into DRC.

Now the LRA are believed to operate across the remote border areas far from control in DRC, raiding villages in Sudan as well as the Central African Republic.

The villagers from Dungu said the rebels were clearing a vast area of forest as their military base.

"They told people that these lands belong to them, and that anyone would be killed if they crossed into them," said Gungbale Gengate, a Protestant priest from Napopo village.

Killers

Gengate, whose Bible school was destroyed by rebels and is now sheltering in Yambio, dismissed reports that Kony claims torun his army on the biblical 10 Commandments.

"These people have no religion - they are killers," Gengate said.

But the LRA spokesman David Nyekorach-Matsanga claimed it was another unnamed militia who carried out the attacks.

"There are many rebel and private militias operating in that region, and these attacks were not by the LRA," said Matsanga, who is based in Kenya but claims to have regular contact with the rarely heard-from Kony.

He also rejected allegations from the ICC that the rebels had renewed recruitment, calling the Hague-based court a "pot of lies".

"The institution of (the) ICC alleges that the LRA have recruited 1,000 fighters," he said. "It is now clear that the ICC targets Africans as their specimen to be used in their laboratory in The Hague."

The refugees from Dungu insisted the attacks were by the LRA. "We know them, because they have raided us many times, looting our houses for food," said Joyce.

"This time they were killing people...When they attacked I hid behind my hut because I wanted to get what I could of my belongings, and I saw them clearly."

Many of the refugees say they have been treated well on their arrival in southern Sudan, in a region where many speak the same Zande language.

However, they are fearful of the future, without homes and few job prospects in a region itself chronically under developed and recovering from war.

"They have destroyed our lives," said Joyce. pm/sr

Snapshot of DR Congo news on Saturday, 15 November 2008 13:30 UK GMT

Obasanjo begins UN mission on DR Congo truce
Afrique en ligne, France - 11 minutes ago
... on Friday arrived in Luanda, Angola, to commence formal consultations on resolving the crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). ...

UN envoy in Congo for peace talks
CNN - 18 minutes ago
Although some people in that area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo have farms or grow their own food, they say it is too dangerous for them to ...

UN envoy says Congo crisis talks going well
Reuters Canada, Canada - 54 minutes ago
... met Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos in Luanda before flying to Democratic Republic of Congo, and has already spoken to Nkunda by telephone. ...

UN special envoy to Congo to meet rebel chief
AFP - 56 minutes ago
KINSHASA (AFP) — The UN's special envoy for the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo confirmed on Saturday that he would meet rebel leader Laurent ...

UN envoy in Congo for talks amid new fighting
The Daily Advance, NC - 1 hour ago
Around 60000 people displaced by fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are to be moved out of the camp because of safety fears, ...

UN envoy meets Kabila on Congo crisis
Reuters UK, UK - 1 hour ago
... met Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos in Luanda before flying to Democratic Republic of Congo, and has already spoken to Nkunda by telephone. ...

Zambia: Warning Bells Ring for Perpetrators of Violence
AllAfrica.com, Washington - 2 hours ago
... would-be refugees from the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Mr Banda said Zambians should guard the peace the country was enjoying. ...

Greenpeace opens first African offices to address emerging issues
Canadian National Newspaper, Canada - 2 hours ago
A second African office will be opened on 24 November in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, with the arrival of the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise and ...

Fergie draws up transfer target hitlist
Peterborough Today, UK - 2 hours ago
Comment below Even if Posh are able to persaude the Democratic Republic of Congo international to complete a permanent move from Premiership club Fulham, ...

UN envoy to mediate in DR Congo
BBC News, UK - 2 hours ago
UN special envoy Olusegun Obasanjo, the former Nigerian president, is in the Democratic Republic of Congo for talks aimed at ending months of violence. ...

UN envoy in Congo for talks to try to end fighting
The Associated Press

UN envoy seeks DR Congo solution
Aljazeera.net

UN envoy meets Kabila on Congo crisis
Reuters South Africa
Jerusalem Post - New York Times

60000 refugees move off Congo frontline
The Age, Australia - 13 hours ago
About 60000 refugees are to be moved from the frontline of fighting between Democratic Republic of Congo rebels and government forces, the United Nations ...

CONGO: ATTACKS FEARED, UNHCR TO MOVE 60, 000 DISPLACED
Agenzia Giornalistica Italia

DR Congo army pushes rebels back
BBC News

Congo rebels grab young men
Seattle Times
CNN - Aljazeera.net

UN distributes food in DR Congo
RTE.ie, Ireland - 3 hours ago
The UN has begun distributing food in rebel-held territory in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the first large-scale delivery in the area since fighting ...

DR Congo's Hutu community decries rebel massacre
An ethnic Hutu leader, who only gave his name as Sekeburomo, said to reporters in Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu, on Sunday that the National Congress ... - [14 hours ago - China Economic Net]

UN delivers food to DR Congo refugees, to move 60,000
The UN delivered Friday the first food aid in two weeks in territory held by rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and said it needed to urgently move 60,000 ... - [14 hours ago - Sydney Morning Herald]

DR CONGO - AID: UN resumes food distribution in rebel-held areas
The UN World Food Programme has begun distributing emergency food supplies in areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo under rebel control for the first time since ... - [20 hours ago - France24 - afrique]

UN To Move 60,000 Refugees To New Camp In Congo For Safety - Nasdaq [23 hours ago]

UN to transfer 60,000 displaced Congolese to new camps - Earthtimes.org [23 hours ago]

Congo’s rebel leader’s political goal
Financial Times

What does Congo's Gen. Nkunda want?
Christian Science Monitor

Illegal mining fuels DR Congo war
BBC News

UN hands out food behind Congo's rebel lines
The Associated Press - 21 hours ago
KIWANJA, Congo (AP) — Thousands of hungry and homeless lined up for food Friday deep in rebel-held territory in eastern Congo as the UN began its first ...

UN hands out Congo food aid
The Press Association

UN hands out food behind rebel lines in Congo
KGAN

WFP hands out food behind Congo's rebel lines
The Associated Press

Five Million Dead and Counting
The disaster in Congo is all the ...
Slate - 13 hours ago
And until September, he led the UN program that encouraged Rwandan Hutu rebels who'd been living in Congo since the genocide to go home. ...

Congo to help fight Rwanda rebels
BBC News

Troops in Rwandan Uniforms Said to Cross Into Congo
(Update1) Bloomberg

EU to consider DR Congo aid mission
Aljazeera.net
guardian.co.uk - Namibian

Peacekeepers stretched to limit in Congo Strand
(subscription)

Foreign troops 'drawn into Congo'
BBC News

UN sounds alarm over DR Congo forces' looting, rapes
The Canberra Times

Crisis in Eastern Congo worsens
Radio Netherlands, Netherlands - 22 hours ago
By Harm van Atteveld A solution for the crisis in Eastern Congo is further away than ever. Fighting is continuing between the national army of the ...

Brown Gives UK Backing for 3000 New UN Peacekeepers in Congo
Bloomberg

DR Congo's Greatest Need Is Diplomacy, Aid Worker Says Deutsche Welle

Britain supports more UN troops for Congo - Brown
Reuters South Africa

Sick and Starving Children in the Congo Need Your Help
Canada NewsWire (press release), Canada - 6 hours ago
15 /CNW/ - cbm has received urgent requests from their partners on the ground in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to help them save lives, treat wounds, ...

First US Flight with Humanitarian Goods Arrives in Democratic ...
MarketWatch

Children abducted by armed groups in eastern DR Congo -UNICEF
(press release)

Red Cross of the Democratic Republic of Congo: "We need to prepare" ReliefWeb (press release)

UN hands out Congo food aid
The Press Association - 16 hours ago
Tens of thousands of people blighted by conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo have received food rations for the first time since fighting began last ...

Food aid gets through to Congo towns
InTheNews.co.uk
East Congo war brings hunger to breadbasket Reuters South Africa

UN starts feeding Congolese who fled fighting CNN
BBC News - Xinhua

Britain backs plan to send extra troops for Congo
CTV.ca [11/13/2008]

Brown to send peacekeeping commanders to the Congo
Mail Online UK [11/14/2008]

DR Congo army pushes rebels back
BBC [11/14/2008]

Britain backs the deployment of UN troops to Congo
Kenya Broadcasting Corporation [11/14/2008]

Continent Must Act on Congo [opinion]
AllAfrica.com[11/14/2008]

Children separated from parents by Congo violence
The Associated Press - Nov 13, 2008
KIBATI, Congo (AP) — Rebecca Nyiringindi scanned the sprawling refugee camp in eastern Congo, searching for just one person among the thousands of hungry ...

Refugee children seek their families in camp
The Herald

Britain's Brown backs extra UN troops for Congo
The Associated Press - Nov 13, 2008
NEW YORK (AP) — British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Thursday he will support a UN plan to send 3000 more troops to
Congo but said the force must have ...

Rwanda and DR Congo agree to co-operate to deal with forces along their common border blamed for 1994 Rwandan genocide

November 14, 2008 BBC report - Congo to help fight Rwanda rebels:

Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo have agreed to co-operate to deal with forces along their common border blamed for the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Both countries' foreign ministers said Rwandan intelligence teams would go into DR Congo to help eradicate them.

The Hutu fighters have lived in eastern DR Congo since 1994 and have been a key factor in destabilising the region.

The Congolese government has often promised to stop Hutu forces from using its territory, but has not done so.

Its forces have been accused of instead working with the FDLR to exploit the region's rich mines.

In last year's Nairobi agreement, the FDLR forces - estimated to number more than 6,000 - were meant to have been disarmed by the end of August.

The deadline was missed. At this point Gen Nkunda's forces resumed fighting.

But speaking at a joint news conference in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, the foreign ministers of Rwanda and DR Congo committed themselves to a course of action that correspondents say could change events in the region.

They agreed to Rwandan intelligence officers going into DR Congo to work with the Congolese army and the international community to help end the presence of the Hutu militia who have operated from the region's hills and forests.

"We confirm our firm will to bring a military plan, with man-power and material support from different countries, to enable us once and for all to put an end to the problem of the FDLR," DR Congo's Foreign Minister Alexis Mwamba Thambwe said.

By foot

Meanwhile, the UN says it is to move 60,000 people from a camp north of Goma to a location west of the city in case of fighting.

The people at Kibati camp are close to the front line separating government troops and rebels loyal to Gen Nkunda.

The UN refugee agency said aid workers have plotted out the new site - called Mugunga III - and most people will have to make the 15km journey there by foot.

Fighting has stopped aid from reaching Kibati and forced many there to flee south to the provincial capital, Goma.

The UN has accused both sides of war crimes during the latest upsurge in violence.

On Friday, women - some with black bin liners covering their hair - gathered at a sports stadium in Goma housing thousands of people who have fled the fighting.

They held up signs saying: "We mourn our children killed in Rutshuru" and "Enough of camp life".

"Women are tired of this war. We are just the victims. All people involved in this war are raping," one demonstrator, Solange Nyamulisa, told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.

A spokesman for the charity ActionAid told the BBC that cases of rape and violence against women have risen dramatically since the latest fighting broke out.

- - -

Cry for peace in DR Congo

Hundreds of women in the Democratic Republic of Congo have taken part in a protest in the eastern city of Goma to demand peace and protection for the region.

"Women are tired of this war, we are just the victims" - Demonstrator Solange Nyamulisa



The demonstrators sang in Swahili "God take care of us, we are tired".



The women say they are being raped by rebel fighters, as well as army and police forces.

One woman, speaking from hospital, said she was among a group of villagers who had been raped by Mai Mai rebels in front of their husbands, who the insurgents had tied up with ropes.

Source: BBC News In Pictures: Cry for peace in Congo

UNHCR says 60,000 refugees in Kibati camp north of Nord-Kivu, Goma are to be moved off frontline - Rebels & govt forces are 600 metres apart at Kibati

Saturday, 15 November 2008 (AFP) report via The West Australian:

60,000 refugees move off Congo frontline

About 60,000 refugees are to be moved from the frontline of fighting between Democratic Republic of Congo rebels and government forces, the United Nations said on Friday amid a "volatile" standoff between the two sides.

Meanwhile there are fears the fierce fighting is threatening the sanctuary of the remaining mountain gorillas in the Virunga National Park.

Renewed fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo between followers of renegade Tutsi general Laurent Nkunda and the army has displaced more than 250,000 people and left more than 100 civilian dead, according to UN and private aid agencies.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said 60,000 people in camps at Kibati, just north of the flashpoint Nord-Kivu provincial capital of Goma, would have to be moved.

"Given the continuing security threat, provincial authorities, UNHCR and its partners have decided to transfer the more than 60,000 people in the two Kibati camps as soon as possible, in a few days," said UNHCR spokesman in Geneva Ron Redmond.

Rebels and government forces are about 600 metres apart at Kibati and a UN peacekeeping force spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Paul Dietrich, said the force was negotiating "to reduce the tension and keep the belligerents separated as much as possible".

Nkunda's troops have surrounded Goma, the main city in eastern DR Congo with about 500,000 people, for the past two weeks.

The UN special envoy for the crisis, former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, arrived on Friday in Kinshasa, where he was to meet DR Congo's President Joseph Kabila.

DR Congo foreign minister Alexis Thambwe Mwamba held talks with ministers and officials in Rwanda on Friday on regional efforts to end the crisis. DR Congo accuses Rwanda of backing Nkunda, but the Kigali government strongly denies this.

Mwamba said after the talks: "Rwanda has an important role to play in the search for a solution to the crisis."

The World Food Program (WFP) said it had begun distributing food supplies for about 12,000 people in rebel-held areas north of Goma, the first operation of its kind since the end of October.

Congo's Virunga National Park has been the victim of a "real bloodbath" after fighting between government and rebel forces spread there, threatening the biodiversity of the UNESCO-listed site, Environment Minister Jose Endundo Bononge said.

"The war that has been imposed on us in the east (of the country) has been a real bloodbath for the environmental sector," Endundo said at a press conference in Kinshasa.

He lamented the "immense harm" caused not only to the park's biodiversity but also the country's tourist industry.

Fighting between the Congolese army and Laurent Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People spread to Virunga, home to more than half the world's 700 remaining mountain gorillas, at the end of October.

Even before that, "In 2007 alone, we recorded the slaughter of 15 mountain gorillas and more than 20,000 antelopes," the minister said, adding that in the past decade the number of hippopotami had fallen from 30,000 to 1,000.

Endundo said Nkunda has placed his own men to protect the park, replacing wildlife officers from the Congolese National Park Authorities.

The rebels have occupied the south side of the park for the past three weeks, while thousands of displaced people have sought refuge there.

- - -

Thursday, November 13, 2008 (Reuters) report by Hereward Holland:

Aid workers to relocate Congo frontline refugees

GOMA, Congo, Nov 13, 2008 (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of refugees at a frontline camp in east Congo must be urgently moved to a safer place so they are not caught in crossfire between rebels and the army, aid officials said on Thursday.

More than 65,000 civilians who have fled weeks of fighting are camped at Kibati, just a few kilometres south of combat lines held by Tutsi rebels loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda and government troops who oppose them.

The refugees, squatting in cramped, dirty conditions within sight of a live volcano, are among 250,000 civilians forced from their homes since a resurgence of fighting in late August in Democratic Republic of Congo's eastern North Kivu province.

Recent frontline artillery and machine gun battles near Kibati have several times disrupted aid distribution to the refugees and sent thousands of them streaming south down the road towards the provincial capital Goma, 10 km (6 miles) away.

"We noticed that this area became the front line ... these (refugees) in Kibati cannot stay in that place," Ibrahima Coly, head of the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) in North Kivu, said.

"We noticed these people might be in serious danger and the humanitarian community decided we should move them from there ... as soon as possible," he told Reuters.

Relief agencies planned to truck civilians who agreed to go to a camp at Mugunga, 10 km (6 miles) west of Goma, he said.

The U.N. has its largest peacekeeping force in the world, 17,000-strong, in Congo but U.N. peacekeepers have been unable to protect hundreds of thousands of uprooted civilians in North Kivu from killings, lootings and rape. Human rights groups say both rebels and government troops have committed abuses.

"What I heard from (U.N. peacekeepers) is that ... they don't have the capacity to protect people (in Kibati)," one aid worker, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.

Nkunda, who wants President Joseph Kabila to agree to talks on Congo's future, last month pushed an offensive by his battle-hardened guerrillas to the gates of Goma, attracting a wave of international attention to the North Kivu conflict.

He suspended the offensive by declaring a ceasefire.

FEARS OF REBEL INFILTRATION

Aid officials say the fighting has created a "catastrophic" security and humanitarian situation, which risks repeating the kind of human devastation caused by a 1998-2003 war that killed several million and engulfed the former Belgian colony.

The aid worker who requested anonymity said their was also a risk Nkunda's fighters may mingle with the displaced civilians.

"If clashes happen, displaced (people) will be moving from the camp to Goma. This might facilitate the infiltration of armed people among the displaced running towards Goma," the worker added.

Humanitarian agencies are clamouring for urgent U.N. troop reinforcements for east Congo. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has asked the Security Council to approve 3,000 more.

"The major preoccupation for us is security," Marjon Kamara, head of UNHCR's Africa department, told Reuters in Senegal.

But U.N. officials say even if approved, troops could take two months to deploy. Eastern and southern African states have also offered peacekeepers, but under a U.N. or regional mandate.

At Kiwanja, near Rutshuru, 70 km (40 miles) north of Goma in the rebel-held zone, human rights groups accuse Nkunda's rebels and a rival pro-government militia of killing dozens of civilians, mostly adults, in tit-for-tat reprisals last week.

They say these took place despite U.N. troops being nearby.

Commanders of the U.N. force in Congo, known as MONUC, say their force, despite its size, is not enough to cover a country the size of Europe, with few roads and where marauding rebel and militia factions are preying on civilians on several fronts.

For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com/

Additional reporting by David Lewis in Kinshasa, Writing by David Lewis and Pascal Fletcher; editing by Alistair Thomson.

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Photo: Children attend the burial of eight-month old Alexandrine Kabitsebangumi, who died from cholera, in a banana grove at Kibati, north of Goma in eastern Congo, November 12, 2008. Packed into squalid refugee camps or roaming in the bush, hundreds of thousands of Congolese children face hunger, disease, sexual abuse or recruitment by marauding armed factions, according to aid workers. Reuters/Finbarr O'Reilly (DRC)



Photo: Raindrops cling to the fingertips of a dead Congolese government soldier lying on the road at the frontline near Kibati, north of Goma in eastern Congo, November 12, 2008. Two soldiers, both shot through the head, were killed in a sharp exchange of artillery, mortar, rocket and machine gun fire late on Tuesday a few kilometres from a refugee camp at Kibati sheltering 80,000 civilians displaced by violence. This is the tense frontline in the simmering war in Democratic Republic of Congo's North Kivu province, where Tutsi rebels and government troops face each other just 200 metres apart from positions in the verdant bush and fields. Reuters/Finbarr O'Reilly (DRC)

+ + + Rest In Peace + + +

MONUC: Senegalese peacekeeper Thiaw Mamadou shot and killed by govt forces (FARDC) in Goma, DR Congo - 3 suspects arrested

Friday, November 14, 2008 Xinhuanet report (via China Economic.Net) - Senegalese peacekeeper killed in DR Congo:

A Senegalese peacekeeper was killed on Friday in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), said the UN peacekeeping mission here on Monday.

Thiaw Mamadou, 24 years old, was shot dead by government forces (FARDC) in the eastern Congolese city of Goma, according to the United Nations Organization Mission in the DR Congo (MONUC).

Three soldiers have been arrested on suspicion of attacking and killing Mamadou, who performed peacekeeping duty in many regions of the province of North Kivu.

No further details about Mamadou's death were revealed by MONUC, which is currently the largest UN peacekeeping force in the world, with 17,000 troops and police.

At the mourning ceremony of Mamadou, MONUC Force Commander Lieutenant-General Babacar Gaye spoke highly of the sacrifice made by the UN peacekeepers, or "blue helmets."

Gaye said that the peacekeepers will safeguard peace of the DR Congo with their blood and lives.

He said he hoped the country would resume peace and stability at an early date.

Fighting in the province of North Kivu between FARDC and a militia led by former general Laurent Nkunda has displaced as many as 253,000 Congolese since late August.

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FORCES AROUND GOMA
CNDP: Gen Nkunda's Tutsi rebels - 6,000 fighters
FDLR: Rwandan Hutus - 6,000-7,000
Mai Mai: pro-government militia - 3,500
Monuc: UN peacekeepers - 6,000 in North Kivu, including about 1,000 in Goma (17,000 nationwide)
DRC army - 90,000 (nationwide)
Source: UN, military experts/BBC

Congolese government soldiers sit in the rain at the frontline in E. Congo



Photo: Congolese government soldiers sit in the rain at the frontline near Kibati, north of Goma in eastern Congo, November 12, 2008. Two government soldiers, both shot through the head, were killed in a sharp exchange of artillery, mortar, rocket and machine gun fire late on Tuesday a few kilometres from a refugee camp at Kibati sheltering 80,000 civilians displaced by violence. This is the tense frontline in the simmering war in Democratic Republic of Congo's North Kivu province, where Tutsi rebels and government troops face each other just 200 metres apart from positions in the verdant bush and fields. Reuters/Finbarr O'Reilly (DRC)

+ + + Rest In Peace + + +

Journalists and other civilians are deliberately being targeted by rebel forces and government-backed militias in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

"The conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo has claimed many civilian victims," said the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). "Now the journalists who are attempting to report on this war are tragically finding themselves under attack."

Source: AllAfrica
International Freedom of Expression Exchange Clearing House (Toronto)
PRESS RELEASE 13 November 2008
Congo-Kinshasa: Journalists Targeted in Recent Clashes:

Journalists and other civilians are deliberately being targeted by rebel forces and government-backed militias in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, report Journalist in Danger (JED), Human Rights Watch and other IFEX members.

Rebel leader Laurent Nkunda's forces battled the Mai Mai, government-backed local militias, on 4 and 5 November for control of Kiwanja in North Kivu province, killing at least 20 civilians trapped in the conflict zone.

On 4 November, Belgian journalist Thomas Scheen, African correspondent for the German newspaper "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung", and his interpreter Charles Ntiricya and their driver Roger Bangue, were abducted by Mai Mai forces in Kinwanja. They were released three days later.

Alfred Munyamaliza Bitwahiki Njonjo, a journalist and presenter on the community radio station Radio Communautaire Ushikira (RACOU), who was reportedly killed in the clashes, is in fact alive. In a phone interview with JED, Njonjo and RACOU's editor-in-chief Faustin Tawite said that, fearing for their lives, they took refuge in a United Nations Mission (MONUC) camp on 7 November.

But RACOU, the only radio station in Kiwanja, was pillaged by Nkunda's forces, says JED, and Njonjo's home was burned down by Mai Mai militias. The station had been airing government press statements and interviews with officials about the security situation. Four other stations in the war zone have pre-emptively shut down, fearing looting, reports the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

"The conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo has claimed many civilian victims," said the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). "Now the journalists who are attempting to report on this war are tragically finding themselves under attack."

According to the UN, more than 100 civilians have been killed, 150 injured and 250,000 displaced since rebels began their offensive in late August, swelling a refugee population that already stood at one million. The recent fighting has severely hampered aid efforts. Tens of thousands of displaced people are in camps north of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, while many others remain in urgent need of food, clean water, healthcare and shelter.

Nkunda claims to be fighting to protect his Tutsi community from attacks by Rwandan Hutu rebels, who fled to DR Congo after Rwanda's 1994 genocide. According to CPJ, groups are also struggling over the rights to rich mineral deposits.

In recent weeks, Nkunda's forces have taken a series of towns and villages near Goma. Government soldiers looted houses and stole vehicles from humanitarian agencies before fleeing. The UN also reports of women being raped during the looting.

JED, Human Rights Watch and at least 10 other human rights and humanitarian agencies are asking governments to respond to the UN's urgent appeal to send more peacekeepers and reinforcements to MONUC, which has been unable to halt abuses against civilians.

Visit these links:

- JED: http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/98362/

- RSF: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=29220

- CPJ: http://tinyurl.com/5t7vrg

- Human Rights Watch: http://tinyurl.com/64qy2c

- BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7722069.stm

DR Congo: Rwandan army soldiers are fighting alongside Nkunda's CNDP while receiving Rwandan salaries - UN food convoy reaches rebel-held Rutshuru

Photo: A humanitarian disaster has been predicted by aid officials in Congo if the fragile ceasefire ordered by commanders of a rebel army fails to hold (Stephen Morrison/EPA/FT.com Nov 3, 2008)

Food aid reaches Congo rebel town
Wednesday, 12 November 2008 report from the BBC:

The UN has managed to send a convoy of badly-needed food aid across the front-line in eastern DR Congo to the rebel-held town of Rutshuru.

The World Food Programme delivered a tonne of high-energy biscuits for children and said it hoped to send more convoys to the area on Friday.

Some 250,000 people have fled violence that flared in August between rebel and government forces.

The UN peacekeeping head has asked for 3,000 more troops to protect civilians.

There are 9,000 UN peacekeepers in the region, out of 17,000 nationwide.

The UN mission in DR Congo, Monuc, is its largest peace force in the world, but its leader says there are not enough troops to protect people from violence.

The latest crisis began when rebels loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda advanced towards Goma, the capital of North Kivu, which is now ringed with refugee camps.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for a ceasefire to allow aid workers to reach 100,000 refugees cut off in rebel-held areas north of Goma.



Photo credit: Getty Images/BBC

BBC discovers 1,500 displaced people in DR Congo camp

All sides were notified about the UN food convoy ahead of the delivery.

Other deliveries are being made around the town of Goma, drawing on a shipment of 65 tonnes of food that arrived in Goma on Wednesday.

But the BBC's Mark Doyle says many have received no significant food aid.

Two hours' drive south of Goma he found 1,700 displaced people outside Minova town.

They were living in shelters made from bent sticks hung with the leaves of banana trees, which our correspondent says served as a hopelessly flimsy roof against often torrential rains and the biting cold of the night.

There were no aid workers at the makeshift camp.

He says at least four children have died in this camp in recent days. Tumu Sabire, 30, says her two-year-old son died from malnutrition.

"I have no food because I ran from the war," she said.

The baby's name was Musaade, which means "help" in Swahili, our reporter says.



Photo: Thousands of people are living in flimsy shelters because of the unrest (AFP/BBC)

Rwandan soldiers

Meanwhile, Britain's Financial Times newspaper says soldiers from the Rwandan army have been fighting alongside the dissident general Laurent Nkunda.

Their reporter in eastern DR Congo interviewed former rebels and observers who said some soldiers were continuing to receive their Rwandan salaries while fighting with the general.
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Photo: Nkunda’s forces are holed up nine miles from Goma, where truckloads of drunken government troops have looted stores, murdered men and raped women as they retreated in panic from the rebel advance (Yasuyoshi Chib/AFP/Getty/FT.com Nov 3, 2008)

Here is a copy of the Financial Times report, mentioned in the BBC report above.

Former rebels put Rwanda under spotlight
November 11, 2008 by Matthew Green in Goma

Rwanda has sought to portray itself as little more than a bystander to the scenes of advancing rebels forcing refugees to flee that are unfolding again over the border in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

But in interviews with the Financial Times, former rebels and observers on the ground say the uprising – led by Laurent Nkunda, the renegade former Congolese general – relies heavily on recruitment in Rwanda and former or even active Rwandan soldiers.



Photo: Nkunda: 25 per cent of his army is said to be Rwandan

Former rebels point to a close but complex relationship in which Rwanda’s government is able to exert considerable leverage on Mr Nkunda. Diplomats say Paul Kagame, the Rwandan president, personally intervened to dissuade the rebel commander from over-running Goma when he reached the edge of the city late last month.

Yet, publicly, Mr Kagame has sought to distance Rwanda from the Congo crisis and international diplomatic efforts to resolve it. At a press conference in Kigali last week he said: “What have I to do with what is going on in the Congo?”

The answer lies partly in the hillside villages and refugee camps in Rwanda that are a vital recruiting ground for Mr Nkunda’s CNDP movement. Former rebels say that in recent years he has recruited Congolese Tutsi refugees there, as well as Rwandan nationals, many of whom are former soldiers acting as mercenaries. Military experts say Rwandans make up at least a quarter of his 4,000-6,000-strong army.

One Rwandan told the FT he had left his cassava farm in March to join six countrymen in the rebellion. “I was looking for money,” said the former Rwandan army soldier. “There was no payment – that’s why I left.”

The United Nations mission in Congo says 73 Rwandans, mainly combatants, were repatriated after leaving Mr Nkunda’s forces last year. A further 76 followed between January and September 10 this year. Human-rights workers say many more are likely to stay in the rebel ranks. Those that have left say would-be deserters are beaten or executed.

Louise Mushikiwabo, the Rwandan information minister, dismissed the testimonies of former CNDP fighters as not “credible” and told the FT: “There is zero involvement of Rwanda in CNDP.”

Rwanda says any recruitment on its territory is clandestine and without its support. But human-rights activists say it could try harder to stop recruitment. UN officials suspect that the CNDP has a network of financial backers that stretches from Rwanda to South Africa and the US.

According to another rebel who recently deserted, units of Rwandan soldiers have fought next to Mr Nkunda’s forces during the past few years. “There were groups of soldiers from Rwanda who were with us,” he said.

He said his uncle, a Rwandan army officer, continued to receive his salary while fighting with Mr Nkunda, and that Rwandan troops who wanted to visit home were given border passes by the Rwandan government

Other former fighters have described using razor blades to remove the Rwandan flag from uniforms sent to the rebel forces.

Evidence of more recent Rwandan support surfaced on October 29, when Uruguayan peacekeepers and international journalists reported seeing Rwandan tanks and artillery firing across the border at Congolese troops defending Goma.

Mr Nkunda’s latest offensive secured a chunk of territory that connects the plateau around his headquarters with a strip of land along the border that might ease infiltration of fighters or weapons from Rwanda.

Mr Nkunda and Rwanda’s government, military and business elite share a history from before the 1994 genocide of Rwanda’s Tutsi minority. Mr Nkunda, a Congolese Tutsi, was an intelligence officer in the guerrilla army that Mr Kagame, a Rwandan Tutsi, used to stop the massacre and seize power.

Mr Kagame launched invasions of Congo in 1996 and 1998 and supported uprisings that Rwandan officials maintain were aimed at neutralising the threat posed by ethnic Hutu fighters who fled following the genocide.

The Congolese government of Joseph Kabila, the president, has periodically adopted the exiled Hutu militias to bolster its weak authority in the east – putting it at odds with Kigali.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008



Photo: Hundreds of thousands fled Goma, the regional capital, and the surrounding countryside when Congolese Tutsi rebel forces commanded by the renegade general Laurent Nkunda captured several key towns (Yasuyoshi Chib/AFP/Getty/FT.com Nov 3, 2008)
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EDITOR'S CHOICE

December 21, 2007 Financial Times' "Slideshow: Congo’s rebel forces" - excerpt:

The Congolese government last month launched a failed offensive aimed at finishing off the threat posed by General Laurent Nkunda, a rebel leader who fought for a Rwandan-backed rebellion during Congo’s 1998-2003 war.

When other factions in Congo bought into the peace process Mr Nkunda refused a job in the new army. He is now to estimated to have 4,000 men under his command.

Fighting between General Nkunda’s forces and the Congolese army has displaced nearly 400,000 civilians in North Kivu since the start of 2007.

Ft.com’s slideshow affords a glimpse behind the lines of the rebel forces.

The following is a list of reports published at FT.com over the past year. A quick glance through the titles of the reports tells a story. Note the reports re oil and nuclear. Some of the reports are copied, in full, here below.

Congo agrees to peace deal with rebels - Jan-22-2008

Warring factions in Congo sign peace pact - Jan-24-2008

Total forecasts increase in oil production - Feb-14-2008

Congo digs for more revenues from minerals - Feb-26-2008

Congo rebels cash in on demand for tin - Mar-05-2008

Congo asks for bigger mining share - Mar-20-2008

Oil majors rebuked for lack of openness - Apr-27-2008

Oil price rises lift BP and Shell - Apr-29-2008

Analyst warns of oil at $200 a barrel - May-06-2008

Record oil prices boost Total to $5bn - May-07-2008

Eni finds oil sands deposits in Congo - May-19-2008

Total and Eni eye nuclear option - Jul-08-2008

Oil price prompts nuclear move - Jul-08-2008

Congo prepares to sell off mining assets - Sep-08-2008

London police probe UN-Congo charity deal - Oct-06-2008

Editorial Comment: Congo reignites - Oct-29-2008

Congo rebels ‘cease fire’ as UN urges restraint - Oct-30-2008

Congo’s truce holds as rebels close in - Oct-31-2008

Rebel grip tightens in eastern Congo - Nov-02-2008

Congo faces fresh cataclysm - Nov-06-2008

Editorial Comment: Conflict in Congo - Nov-09-2008

Congo campaign to drive out peacekeepers - Nov-09-2008



Photo: The UN peacekeeping force currently deployed is stretched to its limit. An upsurge in fighting in the volatile east means more troops are needed urgently (Walter Estrada/AFP/Getty/FT.com Nov 3, 2008)

Congo campaign to drive out peacekeepers
November 9, 2008 Financial Times report by Matthew Green in Goma:

United Nations officials have revealed evidence of a campaign of deadly intimidation by rebels loyal to General Laurent Nkunda, which they believe is aimed at forcing peacekeepers out of Congo.

“They know very well our strengths and weaknesses, and they play with them. This is a war of nerves, a psychological war,” said Sylvie van den Wildenberg, of the peacekeeping mission, known as Monuc, in the eastern city of Goma. “They want us out, that is clear."

Warning letter: Laurent Nkunda, the Congo rebel leader

In a letter to the UN dated October 27, two days before his forces threatened to overrun the eastern city of Goma, Gen Nkunda warned he could not guarantee peacekeepers’ safety.

“In the current circumstances in which our forces are directly confronting the government coalition, we cannot be held . . . accountable for the security of Monuc forces present on the front,” according to the letter, which was made available to the Financial Times by another UN official who requested anonymity.

The letter followed a telephone threat by one of Gen Nkunda’s commanders to kill Indian peacekeeping troops if the force scrambled attack helicopters to support Congolese government forces.

Another UN official, who also declined to be identified, said the phone call was made by Major Castro Mbera during a rebel attack on one the government’s main bases at Rumangabo, 50km north of Goma, on October 7.

Gen Nkunda’s CNDP rebels were not immediately available for comment either on the telephone threat or the letter, which bore his signature and stamp.

It was unclear what impact the threat might have had so far on Monuc operations, although such tactics could, at the very least, have already slowed down its operations.

A withdrawal by Monuc would represent a huge setback for the UN’s peacekeeping projects in Africa, already undermined by the failure of a joint UN-African Union force to end fighting in Sudan’s western Darfur region.

Gen Nkunda’s advance to the edge of Goma, which houses a UN base, has presented the Congo mission with one of its greatest challenges since it deployed troops to shore up a 2002 peace deal. The force has increasingly found itself cast in the role of a participant in fighting between the rebels and the government troops.

The UN, which is mandated to help support Congo’s fragile national institutions – including the military – has provided logistical support and attack helicopters to back up the poorly disciplined and equipped Congolese army, which has been repeatedly routed.

The UN contingent in Goma, which includes troops from India and Uruguay, are now encircled by Gen Nkunda’s forces.

Thousands of troops are scattered in vulnerable bases throughout the region. Monuc has appealed for a further 3,000 peacekeepers from the UN Security Council, but no decision has been taken on making them available.

UN officials say Gen Nkunda’s political supporters have waged an increasingly effective campaign of intimidation and propaganda using a mobile radio station and websites to exploit popular frustration when Monuc fails to protect civilians. Stone-throwing crowds have repeatedly attacked UN vehicles and compounds in recent weeks.

The government of Joseph Kabila, the president, has also stoked antipathy towards Monuc by saying it should be taking a more robust approach towards Gen Nkunda.

(UK business involved in unethical dealings in war-torn eastern Congo should be targeted by international rules that allow government to name and shame companies, Rights & Accountability in Development, a campaign group, argues on Monday, writes Michael Peel)



Photo: Warning letter: Laurent Nkunda, the Congo rebel leader (Credit: Getty Images)

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
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Photo: Nkunda’s rebel forces also share a reputation for savagery and war crimes. Nkunda has said that he has halted his advance and ordered a ceasefire to create a "humanitarian corridor" and allow people to return to their homes. (Jerome Delay/AP/FT.com Nov 3, 2008)

Conflict in Congo
November 9, 2008 (Financial Times) Editorial Comment:

In the turbulent aftermath of independence, Congo hosted the first United Nations attempt at supporting nation building. When that mission failed to prevent civil war, it gave “peacekeepers” a bad name for generations of Congolese, abandoned to the kleptocratic regime of Mobutu Sese Seko.

Nearly half a century later, history is perilously close to being repeated. The UN’s 17,000-strong peacekeeping force in Congo is the largest in the world and, at a cost of more than $1bn a year, its most expensive. But it is spread across a country the size of western Europe and it is coming under fire from every side. Should it collapse, contributing nations will be more reluctant to commit to future UN missions, and peacekeeping may falter across Africa.

The blue helmets are sandwiched between Congolese rebels, intent on forcing them into a humiliating withdrawal, ill-disciplined government troops, and a population angered by their failure to protect civilians. Monuc, the French acronym by which the mission is known, has too few combat troops to hold its own. UN officials fear that the fall of the city of Goma, where UN and government forces are encircled, could be a catalyst for the unravelling of their mission.

France appeared to understand the severity of this threat when it proposed the deployment of a separate 1,500-strong European Union force. Britain helped shoot down the idea, and sent David Miliband, the foreign secretary, to the region as a stop-gap measure. Diplomacy has played a part since in slowing the rebel offensive. But it is no substitute for more robust intervention to save the UN mission.

Peacekeepers have a terrible record in central Africa. But there is one successful precedent. Operation Artemis, the EU intervention in north-eastern Congo in 2003, was limited in size and scope. But the mainly French soldiers were equipped to make a difference. They rescued a besieged contingent of Uruguayan blue helmets, halted the massacre of civilians and provided breathing space for a political solution to be found.

Monuc shares some of the blame for its own failure to do the same around Goma. But assistance from the EU would give the UN time to get its house in order. It would send an important signal to combatants that the world is serious about preventing another regional war. And it would allow more serious efforts to address the causes of the conflict to begin. The cost might be high at a time of global penny-pinching. But the consequence of inaction will ultimately be far higher.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
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Photo: The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has reported that some refugee camps in rebel-held territory had been "forcibly emptied, looted and burnt" (Karel Prinsloo/AP/FT.com Nov 3, 2008)

Congo faces fresh cataclysm
November 6, 2008 Financial Times report by Matthew Green in Goma:

On a plain of lava outside the eastern Congolese town of Goma, three young men oversee a roadblock made from empty crates of ammunition. Their makeshift barrier marks the end of a narrow strip of no man’s land surrounding the town and the start of rebel country.

With their motley fatigues, battered AK-47 rifles and wary expressions, the gunmen could belong to any of myriad armed groups that have skirmished for years for a slice of wealth and power in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s chaotic east.

But this rebellion, in which Laurent Nkunda, the renegade general, has marched his troops almost to the gates of Goma, is turning out to be different. Just when many Congolese – and the west – had hoped the country was emerging from a nightmarish decade of civil strife, it appears once more to be on the brink.

“We will take Goma,” says a rebel officer, who gave his name as Lieutenant Muragizi, speaking in the almost deserted village of Ruhagi farther up the track, abandoned by residents fleeing from the rebel advance. “And the whole of Congo.”

People in Goma – who have witnessed the passage of rebel armies, waves of refugees and, in 2002, a lava flow that razed much of the town – are braced for another cataclysm.

“It’s certain the rebels can come to Goma,” says Furaha Zubeda, a middle-aged woman who ventured beyond the frontline to look for relatives in villages emptied by the rebel advance. “We don’t know what will happen from one day to the next.”

An estimated 250,000 Congolese have been forced to flee Gen Nkunda’s latest onslaught, on top of 1m already displaced in the past two years.

Crowding into camps on the edge of Goma, thousands must queue in pouring rain for rations doled out by aid agencies. For the west, the violence threatens to tear up the script they had written in the hope of piecing Africa’s fallen giant back together.

Elections held two years ago – the country’s first presidential polls since independence from Belgium – were supposed to have ushered in an era of peace, reconciliation and reconstruction, and to have opened up mining concessions worth billions of dollars.

Instead, Joseph Kabila, Congo’s president, faces the biggest military threat since the end of a conflict which dragged in various foreign armies five years ago. Fears are intensifying that the rebellion, currently confined largely to the North Kivu region, could spread.

Reports of ethnic killings by the rebels at Kiwanja, some 80km north of Goma, have raised the risk of reprisals.

Allegations of involvement by Congo’s neighbours have also raised the risk of an escalation. The US has said Gen Nkunda’s forces have used Rwanda as a rear base. Some UN officials suspect a higher degree of collaboration, while many in Goma regard the rebels as proxies for the Kigali government.

Mr Kabila and Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, are due to meet in a hastily convened UN-backed summit in Kenya on Friday. But the fact that Gen Nkunda has managed to pose such a formidable threat has exposed precisely to what extent previous negotiations have failed to address the drivers of violence on the other side of the country from the capital, Kinshasa.

Gen Nkunda, an ethnic Tutsi whose forces have been accused of human rights violations, has sought to portray himself as protector of the minority of ethnic Tutsis in eastern Congo.

He cites Mr Kabila’s failure to disarm Hutu militia who fled to Congo after committing the 1994 genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda as one of the reasons for his revolt.

He has also managed to mobilise powerful business and political interests to help turn his CNDP rebels into a more potent force. UN officials suspect the group has a network of financial backers that stretches through Rwanda, South Africa and the US.

Rwanda’s government, which has backed previous rebellions in eastern Congo to further its economic and security interests, denies providing support, although few in Goma believe that.

Julien Paluku, governor of North Kivu, wants to see EU member states such as France and the UK turn discussions about the possibility of deploying a special force to protect Goma into action.

“If they deployed a well-equipped force, with attack helicopters, it would be a deterrent,” he told the Financial Times from his residence overlooking Lake Kivu on the edge of the city. “The international community must put pressure on Nkunda.”

With such a deployment apparently a distant prospect, diplomatic approaches to Gen Nkunda may persuade him – and his Rwandan backers – that the cost, in terms of international credibility, of taking Goma may be too high.

While the people of the town wait for what may come next, time for talking is running short.



Photo: A rebel soldier pictured in a village in the Mulimbi mountain range. The militias allied themselves with the Congolese army as the Congo was plunged into war between 1998 and 2003 (Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty/FT.com Nov 3, 2008)

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
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Photo: Nkunda, pictured here in the northeastern Congolese town of Kitshoumba, accuses the Congolese Government of supporting the Rwandan Hutu militias who took part in the genocide and then, after being defeated, crossed the border to find sanctuary in eastern Congo. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty)

Rebel grip tightens in eastern Congo
November 2, 2008 Financial Times report by William Wallis, Africa Editor:

Rebels led by renegade commander Laurent Nkunda on Sunday tightened their grip over a swathe of territory in eastern Congo captured after they routed government forces in fighting.

However, the rebels have stalled their advance on the border city of Goma amid international efforts to prevent the United Nations’ 17,000-strong peacekeeping mission from unravelling and to stop a wider war in Congo from re-igniting.

International envoys have flocked to the region, visiting Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, and neighbouring Rwanda, since UN officials last week warned of an impending humanitarian catastrophe prompted by the rebel offensive.

Hundreds of thousands of Congolese villagers have been displaced and are on the road without food or shelter, according to aid workers. There are reports that camps for the displaced have been forcibly emptied and burned.

David Miliband, Britain’s foreign secretary and Bernard Kouchner, his French counterpart called jointly at the weekend for political efforts to end the crisis. But they gave no firm promise of European Union military reinforcements, one proposal, for the struggling UN mission, after visiting Goma.

Gen Nkunda’s Tutsi-led rebels reached the outskirts of the city bordering Rwanda last week before calling a unilateral ceasefire. Panicked government soldiers retreated into Goma, looting some neighbourhoods before UN peacekeepers and other government forces regained some control.

“The crisis, even if averted in the short term, will return without a new, vigorous and united political effort,” the British and French foreign Ministers said in a joint statement.

Diplomats in the region said a regional summit could take place in Kenya as soon as next week, but it is unclear what prospects for success any such summit would have.

Gen Nkunda claims he is fighting to protect the Tutsi minority in the region from an alliance of Hutu militias, some of whom took part in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Congolese government soldiers and other armed groups.

Congo in turn accuses neighbouring Rwanda of supporting Gen Nkunda, who has made repeated attempts to take control of the eastern Kivu provinces neighbouring Rwanda since Congo’s 1998-2003 war formally ended.

Alexei Thambwe Mwamba, Congo’s foreign minister, told the Financial Times he had urged Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president in a meeting in Kigali, to exert pressure on Gen Nkunda to rejoin a peace process which collapsed in August following repeated ceasefire violations.

“We did not get a clear response on this,” Mr Thambwe Mamba said. However, he added that Rwanda had intervened to dissuade Gen Nkunda from taking Goma.

Officially, the Congolese government is insisting that the rebels disarm before any negotiations begin. But with Kinshasa’s positioning weakening by the day, even some government members are now dissenting.

Mbusa Nyamwisi, the minister of local government and a former warlord, said it was imperative to open direct talks with Gen Nkunda, and that a means was found to neutralise the Rwandan Hutu militias he claims to be fighting.

Their presence in eastern Congo has twice provided a pretext for Rwanda’s invasion of the country and its support for a succession of rebel proxies.

Regional specialists and experts in the UN mission believe there is a danger that Gen Nkunda’s latest offensive could draw in other disaffected Congolese groups to a broader rebellion that could spark the intervention of regional armies who participated in Congo’s 1998-2003 war.

”We must do everything we can to stop that happening again. This country has suffered so much already,” Mr Nyamwisi said by phone from Kinshasa.

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Photo: A woman cries as displaced people march into the provincial capital of Goma. The 1998-2003 conflict sucked in Rwanda and neighbouring African countries. Up to 5 million people are thought to have died (Walter Astrada/AFP/Getty)

Congo rebels ‘cease fire’ as UN urges restraint
October 29, 2008 Financial Times report by William Wallis in London [last updated: October 30 2008 09:20]:

Congolese rebels have declared a ceasefire after four days of fighting that have precipitated “a humanitarian crisis of catastrophic dimensions” according to the United Nations.

As the UN Security Council pleaded for restraint, the forces of renegade Tutsi commander Laurent Nkunda on Wednesday tightened their noose around the eastern city of Goma and captured a significant Congolese army base. By the evening they had captured a stretch of territory along the Rwandan border and were advancing towards Goma, threatening to overwhelm UN peacekeepers who have their principal base there.

Tens of thousands of Congolese villagers fled, alongside routed government troops. Aid workers said there was a risk that more than 1m people displaced over the past two years would be cut off from humanitarian aid.

Gen Nkunda claims to be protecting Congo’s minority Tutsis from Rwandan Hutu militias who have been present in eastern Congo ever since they carried out the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. He has been fighting an intermittent battle in the region against government forces, whom he claims are working with the militias.

His activities have mostly been contained to the province of North Kivu. But he now threatens to take the battle to Kinshasa, 1,500 km away, and there are growing suspicions that his latest offensive has the support of neighbouring Rwanda.

Any such involvement could lead to a serious escalation of the conflict. The Kinshasa government accuses Rwanda of backing the rebels, and on Wednesday said Rwandan tanks had fired on Congolese territory.

Kigali responded with similar accusations against the Congolese. The UN said Rwandan troops had crossed into Congo in pursuit of government soldiers after an exchange of artillery fire and Jendayi Frazer, US assistant secretary of state, said “Rwandan territory is being used to support” the rebels.

Rwanda has invaded Congo twice in the past decade, in support of rebel proxies attempting to take power in Kinshasa. The wars that ensued drew in armies from most of Congo’s nine neighbouring countries and led to conflict over control of its immense mineral resources. It is estimated that 5m Congolese died in the process.

Under heavy international pressure, foreign forces withdrew from the country in 2003, and since elections returned Joseph Kabila to the presidency in 2006, a 17,000-strong UN peacekeeping force has contained the violence.

However, this time there is a real risk that the UN mission will be overwhelmed, a senior diplomat in the region said.

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Photo: The Save the Children charity, which was forced to pull out of Goma after government troops went on the rampage last week, has now sent an emergency team back into the city (Karel Prinsloo/AP/FT.com Nov 3, 2008)

Congo reignites
October 29, 2008 Financial Times report:

The war that has claimed more victims than any other since world war two is reigniting at potentially horrific cost. Several million Congolese died before international efforts to broker peace began to bear fruit in 2003. The United Nations’ largest peacekeeping force has since prevented a legacy of localised conflicts regaining nationwide momentum, although atrocities have continued on a monstrous scale. This time, however, the pattern of fighting, and of bellicose statements emanating from neighbouring capitals, bears alarming similarities to events that led in the past to a devastating regional war.

Ethnic Tutsi rebels allied to neighbouring Rwanda are poised to capture the eastern city of Goma, where UN forces have their principal base. More than a million displaced villagers risk being cut off from aid. Congolese government troops are on the run and Kinshasa is appealing to Angola to intervene on its behalf. History is repeating itself. Britain and America – as Rwanda’s principal western allies – risk playing a proxy role in a possible bloodbath and collapse of the UN mission if they fail to use their leverage.

A conflagration is inevitable if Rwanda becomes more explicitly involved. The Rwandan government denies supporting renegade commander and alleged war criminal Laurent Nkunda, who is threatening to take his battle to Kinshasa, 1,500km away. But if Kigali has not already contrived to make his latest offensive possible, it is intervening on his behalf now, exchanging fire with Congolese troops.

The Kinshasa government is far from saintly itself. It holds part of the blame for the collapse of a ceasefire accord signed last year. The UN mission has proved only partially effective. A policy of containment has cooled tensions but left causes unaddressed. Among these is the continued presence in eastern Congo of Hutu militias, bearing the same philosophy that fuelled the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Few analysts believe they pose a significant threat to Rwanda now. But they provide a pretext for General Nkunda to maintain a standing army to protect the business interests of wealthy minority Tutsis.

Speaking about Russia in Georgia, David Miliband, Britain’s foreign secretary, said this week that whatever the rights or wrongs, they did not justify one country invading another. Britain is Rwanda’s largest bilateral donor. The US is a key ally too. Together they have influence in Central Africa, which they did not have in the Caucasus, to prevent Rwanda crossing Congo’s border and to force it to restrain Gen Nkunda.

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London police probe UN-Congo charity deal
October 6, 2008 Financial Times report by Michael Peel, Legal Correspondent

City of London police are probing whether a landmark United Nations deal to supply life-saving drugs to Congo was marred by bribery involving two key contractors employed to help prevent corruption.

British and Danish investigators are examining about $1m (£563,000, €725,000) of alleged payments by Denmark’s Missionpharma, a leading supplier of generic medicines to poor countries, to a British-registered charity that advised the UN on the project, people familiar with the case said.

The case is being investigated by City police’s anti-corruption unit, which was set up two years ago as part of government efforts to counter criticism of Britain’s alleged hypocrisy in calling for poor countries to root out bribery while failing to prosecute the western companies involved in it.

The allegations – surrounding a $34m deal to supply HIV and malaria drugs between 2005 and 2007 to one of the world’s poorest countries – highlight the problems of suspected bribery that still dog multinational companies and humanitarian aid.

The international Global Fund for disease prevention, which financed the project, said it was “deeply concerned that companies or individuals trusted with money provided to save lives in the fight against Aids, tuberculosis and malaria may have abused that trust”.

It added: “We have been working closely with police authorities to unearth any evidence of wrongdoing.”

The police probes in London and Copenhagen have worked jointly since last year on investigating a complex series of transactions suspected of routing the money from Missionpharma to a British bank account linked to World Response, which is registered in the UK as a charity and in the US as a nonprofit organisation, people familiar with the case said.

City police last week arrested Guido Bakker, director of World Response, on money laundering charges, after the earlier arrest of Art Scheffer, the organisation’s president. The men, both Dutch nationals, have been released on bail until next year.

World Response did not answer a series of questions submitted by the Financial Times to its website.

Neither Mr Bakker nor Mr Scheffer could be reached.

Mr Bakker was the Global Fund’s procurement manager between 2002 and 2004, according to World Response’s website.

The Global Fund said Mr Bakker joined it on secondment from a US non-governmental body, then worked between 2003 and 2005 on a number of short-term engagements and consultancies.

Missionpharma, which has its roots in supplying cheap drugs to missionary clinics associated with Scandinavian churches, has customers in more than 80 countries, including governments, UN agencies and non-governmental organisations.

Kim Ginnerup, Missionpharma’s managing director, confirmed he and his company were under investigation in Denmark, but declined to give details. He denied all wrongdoing and said the way events were unfolding was “a little bit tragic”.

He said: “For more than 30 years, we [have been] a respectable company. So this is really something that has been very unpleasant.”

An article last year in the Global Health Council’s magazine described how the Congo project was “harnessing the magic of the marketplace” to deliver help to a country in which the life expectancy is about 50 years and millions of people had died in the deadliest conflict since the second world war.

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Congo prepares to sell off mining assets
September 8, 2008 Financial Times report:

The government of Democratic Republic of Congo is planning to privatise some of its most valuable mining assets, as well as take a larger share of any future discoveries made in the mineral-rich country.

Victor Kasongo, Congo’s deputy minister of mines, said on Friday that “a major future initiative” for the government was the transformation of state-owned mining companies into commercial entities. He said new management would be drafted in to turn round ailing businesses and then they could be floated through an initial public offering or stakes could be sold to private mining groups.

The first mining flotation should happen “in less than 12 months”, said Mr Kasongo. “Gecamines [the state copper company] is a very interesting asset. And Okimo [the state gold company] has a lot of good reserves, it could be a good company for an IPO.”

The news comes as the government continues its review of the country’s mining contracts, many of which were signed when Congo was embroiled in a bloody civil war.

Mr Kasongo said that of the 61 mining companies involved in the review, the government was satisfied that 14 were developing their projects in a way that was fair and transparent. But 25 companies would have their contracts modified and a further 22 companies “have contracts so far out of line with mainstream international practice as to warrant cancellation”. These groups would have to renegotiate their contacts completely.

Companies including Freeport McMoRan, Lundin Mining, Anvil Mining, Katanga Mining and First Quantum Minerals are involved in the long-running talks with the government. The uncertainty over their contracts has depressed their share prices, while several other large mining companies are waiting until the review is completed before investing in the country.

Mr Kasongo declined to say which companies had not satisfied government requirements and risked having their mining licences revoked. “We want to leave the negotiations some room.”

The government also revealed that it would take control of any future mineral discoveries made in the country by private companies. It said state-owned companies such as Gecamines and Okimo would automatically own 51 per cent of any mining project, which it claimed was “based on the standard international practice of countries such as South Africa and Zambia”.

www.ft.com/commoditiesboom
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Eni finds oil sands deposits in Congo
May 19, 2008 Financial Times report by Ed Crooks in Pointe Noire, Congo
[Last updated: May 19 2008 19:14]

Eni, the Italian oil group, has discovered a large oil sands deposit in the Republic of Congo that is expected to become Africa’s first large unconventional oil development and could hold several billion barrels.

Paolo Scaroni, Eni’s chief executive, said the project, due to begin production in 2011, opened “a new front” in the development of “unconventional” oil.

Unconventional resources, such as oil sands, which have in the past been considered too difficult or expensive to extract, are expected to provide an increasing proportion of the world’s fuel supply in future as conventional reserves run down.

Canada’s oil sands and Venezuela’s Orinoco belt have the world’s biggest known heavy oil reserves. The area to be developed by Eni is on a smaller scale, but is still likely to be very substantial.

Eni has not put a figure on the scale of the resources in its 1,790 square km licence area, but a sample 100 square km area that Eni has studied is estimated to hold 500m to 2.5bn barrels of recoverable oil.

That suggests the area as a whole could hold more oil than Eni’s entire reserves of 7bn barrels of oil equivalent.

It would put the resource base on a par with the 9bn-13bn barrels of oil equivalent at the problem-plagued, Kashagan field in Kazakhstan, where Eni is one of consortium members.

The deal giving Eni the oil sands licence, which was agreed last month, is part of an energy package it signed with Brazzaville.

It also includes investment in conventional oil production, a new power plant that will supply 80 per cent of Congo’s electricity, and 70,000 hectares of plantations to produce palm oil for food consumption and biofuels. Eni is also investing in capturing the associated gas from its oil fields that is burnt off in flares, to use in the power plant and the heavy oil processing plants or upgraders.

In total, Eni plans to invest $3bn in Congo, during 2008-11, excluding the heavy oil project. It could spend several billion more on upgraders to process the heavy oil into a form that can be readily sold on world markets. Each upgrader, with a capacity of 40,000 barrels per day, is expected to cost €1bn ($1.5bn). Eni suggested it could build five.

Eni has been in Congo since 1969, but stepped up its interest last year with the $1.4bn purchase of assets from Maurel & Prom of France, and the £1.7bn ($3.3bn) takeover of London-listed oil independent Burren Energy.

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Congo to review mining contracts
June 11, 2008 Financial times report by Dino Mahtani in Lagos:

The government in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Monday said it had started a review of about 60 mining contracts signed during war-time and subsequently by an unelected power-sharing government.

The review comes as part of an expected shake-up of Congo’s mining sector after Joseph Kabila, the transitional president, won elections last year making him the country’s first elected leader in four decades.

Pressure for the review has come from international donors and lobby groups who have argued that the contracts do not give war-shattered Congo a good deal and were signed in opaque circumstances.

Corruption and misuse of the mining sector in Congo played a big role in the country’s 1998-2003 war, which dragged in several neighbouring countries and killed up to 4m people.

During the war, many of Congo’s mining concessions had been mortgaged off by government and rebels alike to pay for weapons and the support of foreign armies. Mr Kabila has retained a strong influence in Gecamines, the state-owned copper company, which has its most lucrative concessions in his southern home province of Katanga.

In an internal memo leaked to the FT last year, a senior World Bank official also raised concerns that three of the biggest Gecamines joint ventures, approved under Mr Kabila’s transitional government in 2005, were not transparent and were too generous to the external partners.

The deals were approved before a consultant was brought in, under pressure from the World Bank, to restructure Gecamines.

Giant mining multinationals and smaller players alike have been crowding each other to invest billions of dollars in Congo’s lucrative mining sector now that relative stability has returned to the central African country.

While Mr Kabila’s government has commissioned the review as part of its plans to regain the credibility of international donors, senior government officials are keen the review does not disrupt their investment plans.

Mines minister Martin Kabwelulu said the review would highlight “irregularities” and “dishonesty” in each contract.

”I don’t want to say just yet if there will be any eventual cancellation of contracts,” he told Reuters. “We are confident that the partners we’ve signed contracts with want to see our country develop. I hope no contracts will be cancelled.”

Last year, Paul Fortin, the consultant brought in by the World Bank to help restructure Gecamines, told the FT that he did not expect wholesale changes in contracts.

In March, Congo, which holds some of the world’s biggest deposits of copper and cobalt as well as diamonds and gold, suspended all negotiations on future deals pending a review.

Ministry officials say the review could take three months but some mining experts say it could take longer, especially if there are issues of transparency.

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Total and Eni eye nuclear option
July 8, 2008 Financial Times report by Carola Hoyos in London:

Two of Europe’s biggest oil and gas companies, Total and Eni, each plan to bring nuclear power to countries in the Middle East.

Their proposals mark a contentious shift in an industry being squeezed out of many of the biggest oil and gas fields.

Total plans to help build nuclear power plants with a view to negotiating better terms and access in the oil and gas industry in countries with which it has long relationships, Christophe de Margerie, chief executive, told the Financial Times.

The strategy, he said, was behind plans unveiled in January for Total, Areva, the French nuclear group, and Suez, the utility, to build two pressurised water reactors in the United Arab Emirates. He expected to sign a similar deal with another Middle Eastern country soon.

In a separate interview, Paolo Scaroni, chief executive of Eni, said he was considering following Total’s lead. Egypt and Algeria were possible candidates.

Nuclear companies such as Areva have failed to gain a significant foothold in the Middle East because executives assumed that the gas-rich region would not need their services.

However, other than Qatar, many countries have failed to tap their gas resources and face looming shortages amid booming economies and growing gas-heavy industries such as petrochemicals.

“I told the UAE, ‘why don’t you think about nuclear?’” Mr de Margerie said, adding that, in the longer term, Total could also help India build nuclear reactors to produce power.

Total would not settle for a broker’s fee for such an arrangement, he said. “Why should we get rewarded just as electricity contractors?”

Mr Scaroni said Eni would suggest nuclear power capacity as an alternative to gas for power generation to countries that either needed gas for other internal uses or to sell abroad. “It is logical for us [to say to them], ‘we make nuclear and you keep the gas’.”

Oil companies had the experience of running and financing big, complex projects and the contacts in the countries that could benefit from nuclear power, he said.

Mr Scaroni said it would be more difficult for Eni to go nuclear than for Total, even though Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, has embraced nuclear power. “For us it is difficult, but not impossible,” he said.

The strategy has its critics, not least those concerned at the spread of nuclear power in such a volatile region.

However, oil industry sources said Total had the full support of the French government. The oil company’s new-found interest fits well with France’s ambitions to advance its nuclear technology internationally so that it forms the basis of a nuclear renaissance in countries such as the UK, China and Russia.

Mr de Margerie ruled out any interest in Total taking over Areva, whose office faces that of Total on the outskirts of Paris.
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Oil price prompts nuclear move
July 8, 2008 Financial Times report by Carola Hoyos:

When Christophe de Margerie, Total’s chief executive, floated the idea early last year that the French oil and gas company eventually needed to be part of the “nuclear adventure” he stressed this would only be in the very long term.

Even so, the rest of the industry scoffed at the notion that an oil and gas company would some day go nuclear.

But the very long term has become the short term and Mr de Margerie has mapped out his strategy far more quickly than even he had expected.

Through bringing nuclear energy to the Middle East, Mr de Margerie wants to win access to oil reserves, make a decent return and help the region overcome its gas shortage.

And the unusually frank and sometimes provocative Frenchman is no longer alone. Paolo Scaroni, chief executive of Italy’s Eni and a fierce competitor, wants to do the same.

The catalyst, ironically, has been the oil price. International benchmark oil prices have more than doubled in the past year, prompting oil-rich countries, such as Kazakhstan and Venezuela, to demand an ever-increasing stake in projects and to squeeze international oil companies out of fields.

This has meant big oil and gas companies, including BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Eni, Total, ExxonMobil and Chevron, have struggled to increase their production and are looking for new ways to grow.

Many are moving into liquefied natural gas but even here there is a limit to the amount of projects available in the next decade.

That leaves the companies sitting on huge piles of cash. Even with a generous buy-back policy and consistent dividend payment plan, ExxonMobil, the biggest of the bunch, holds more than $40bn.

Exxon may not be ready to move into nuclear energy yet – an adventure the company says it tried unsuccessfully in the 1980s – but Eni and Total believe nuclear may be a better place for their money than the bank.

The move may be controversial but it would also help the world meet the huge challenge of generating the 50 per cent increase in energy forecasters say will be needed to satisfy demand in the next 22 years.

To cut CO2 emissions aggressively while meeting demand, the world would need to build 32 new nuclear plants each year from 2010-2050, the International Energy Agency, the developed countries’ watchdog, told the G8 last month.

That makes nuclear a more interesting industry than alternatives such as solar and wind, in spite of its high entry cost, some oil executives believe.

But why are Total and Eni focusing first on the Middle East?

The nuclear industry long assumed that the region would use its gas resources and therefore have no need of nuclear power.

However, the Middle East now faces an acute shortage gas and power.

In spite of billions of barrels of reserves, the region is short of gas, largely because its countries have failed to invest adequately in oil’s “poorer brother”.

Some analysts estimate the total shortfall for the six countries of the Gulf Co-operation Council – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates – will reach at least 7,000bn cubic feet by 2015.

That is as much as 41 per cent of the UK’s entire remaining proven gas reserves. This shortage could have profound effects on the countries’ ability to meet the quickly rising power demand that comes with booming economies in need of air conditioning, or to fulfil their ambitions to grow their petrochemicals business, which needs gas as a feedstock.

Eni and Total believe they can capitalise on the region’s interest in nuclear energy – and perhaps in the process redefine themselves.

Even Saudi Arabia, in whose rich oilfields most international oil companies wish they could operate, has expressed an interest in nuclear power.

There could be other benefits from moving into the nuclear arena.

Eventually companies such as Total may well be forced by dwindling natural gas supplies to use nuclear power to extract extra heavy oil from the Alberta tar sands.

Having an understanding of the industry could give them an edge over their competitors. Even those who do not agree with Total and Eni’s nuclear vision acknowledge that their companies are having to change profoundly.

Antonio Brufau, executive chairman of Repsol YPF, said oil and gas companies would have to find new ways to grow in the future. “In 10-15 years companies like us will become energy companies, not oil companies,” he said.

“Markets will narrow, we are converging into one single thing.”

Mr Brufau said this would happen gradually and include acquisitions, resulting in companies involved in everything from oil and gas exploration to providing power to the end consumer. “In the end we will have to invest more in markets.”

Judging from the speed with which Mr de Margerie has moved towards nuclear, that time may be closer than Mr Brufau thinks.

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Photo: A Congolese soldier carries a rocket in the town of Kibumba. The present fighting could rekindle conflict on such a scale that it has led to an international scramble to solve the crisis. Mr Nkunda however has made it clear that his men would resist any international force that took sides in the conflict (Walter Astrada/AFP/Getty/FT.com Nov 3, 2008)