By Claudia Parsons UNITED NATIONS, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Belgium said on Wednesday it could contribute to a possible European force in its former colony Congo to bridge the period while the United Nations prepares to step up its peacekeeping force there. The U.N. Security Council voted last week to send 3,000 extra peacekeepers to Democratic Republic of Congo to help protect civilians and end weeks of conflict in the turbulent east of the central African country. The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo, known by its French acronym MONUC, is the world's biggest U.N. peacekeeping operation and will be increased temporarily to around 20,000. MONUC chief Alan Doss told the council on Wednesday the reinforcements would not be on the ground for at least two months and it would probably take longer than that. "This is why we have and continue to support the calls for the deployment of a multinational force as a bridging measure until MONUC is fully reinforced," Doss said. Belgian Foreign Minister Karel de Gucht said Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had requested a European role in such a force and European Union foreign ministers would discuss various options in the coming weeks. "If this were a European operation with a very well defined command structure and rules of engagement, yes, my country would be ready to participate in this with troops," de Gucht told reporters after the council meeting in which he said Belgium was in favor of European action. Ban sees the need for a bridging force lasting between three and six months, de Gucht said. In colonial times, Congo was a personal fiefdom of Belgium's King Leopold II, living under a brutal enslavement regime marked by atrocities. Relations with Belgium have been rocky at times since Congo's independence in 1960. The Security Council received a report from Ban's office that said government soldiers and rebels had committed serious human right abuses, including mass killings, arbitrary executions, rape and torture. The document, obtained by Reuters on Monday, called the human rights situation in the mineral-rich country "a cause for grave concern." ILLEGAL GOLD MINING Tutsi rebel leader Laurent Nkunda's month-long campaign against chaotic government forces in the eastern province of North Kivu has displaced 250,000 people. The fighting has compounded the suffering in a country where some 5.4 million people have already died of violence, hunger and disease linked to the conflict in the past decade. Human Rights Watch, Oxfam and other non-governmental agencies urged the Security Council on Wednesday to rewrite the mandate of MONUC to focus more on protection of civilians, especially women and children who have been subject to sexual violence and increased recruitment of child soldiers. Carina Tertsakian, a representative of Global Witness, also urged the council to address illicit exploitation of natural resources, especially coltan and gold, by rebel groups and some units of the army. She said international companies should do more to identify the origin of all their mineral supplies, and refuse to buy from areas of conflict, rather than turn a blind eye to a trade that was fueling the violence in Congo. Belgium's de Gucht said mineral resources were one of the main reasons for the conflict and vowed to look into any Belgian-based companies identified by Global Witness as involved in such trade. "Tackling the sources of financing of armed groups could turn out to be more effective than any other military strategy," he told the council. French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert said France would be drafting a new resolution extending the U.N. force's mandate in the coming weeks and would focus on protecting civilians. (Editing by Anthony Boadle)
A cholera patient lies in a bed at the Don Bosco center in Goma in eastern Congo, November 20, 2008. Fighting in eastern Congo has displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians ...
