By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS, Oct 30 (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council must send more peacekeepers to eastern Congo and increase pressure on the Rwandan and Congolese governments if another humanitarian catastrophe in Africa is to be avoided. Recent fighting has sent tens of thousands of civilians running for their lives in North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where aid workers say two years of violence has forced nearly 1 million people from their homes despite the end of country's broader 1998-2003 war. Citing the financial crisis and a global shortage of peacekeepers, members of the divided council are reluctant to throw more troops at a Central African crisis where they feel the main actors have yet to make a full commitment to peace. They also wonder why MONUC -- the French acronym for the largest U.N. peacekeeping mission in the world -- should need more troops for Congo when it already has 17,000 at its disposal. But U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says the violence is creating a humanitarian crisis of "catastrophic dimensions" and announced he was sending senior envoys to Rwanda and Congo. With the 15-nation council divided over who is to blame, the only thing it has done is issue two non-binding statements condemning renegade Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda, whose rebels are poised to take the North Kivu capital Goma, and calling for an end to the violence. Rwanda and Congo accuse each other of border incursions during this week's assault by Tutsi rebels on Goma. Both deny attacking the other. Diplomats say Washington and London are hesitant to come down too hard on Rwandan President Paul Kagame, a favorite with many Western donors whose testy ties with Paris have further soured since Rwanda called for senior French officials to be tried for their alleged role in the country's 1994 genocide of Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Washington says Rwandan territory was used to launch attacks on Congo but that it has no proof Kigali is backing Nkunda's campaign to protect Tutsis and challenge Kinshasa. France, diplomats say, wants the council to avoid harsh criticism of Congolese President Joseph Kabila, whose army is accused of operating too closely with Rwandan Hutu militias, some of whose members were involved in the 1994 genocide. U.N. MISSION IN CRISIS It is time for council members to set aside their differences and save some lives, analysts say. "Number one, what we need is continued pressure both on the warring factions and on the governments of Congo and Rwanda to ensure that they do not support each others' enemies -- and there is clear evidence that that is happening," said Anneke Van Woudenberg, an Africa specialist at Human Rights Watch. "The council has been reluctant to publicly criticize either the Kabila or the Kagame governments for doing so, and it is high time that it became much more vocal about that." In private, numerous council diplomats do not hesitate to accuse Rwanda of supporting Nkunda's CNDP rebels. But the council's public record does not reflect that view. In a statement agreed unanimously on Wednesday, the council had no tough words for either Rwanda or Congo. Instead it urged the two governments "to take concrete steps to defuse tensions and to restore stability in the region." It also asked Congo's government "to ensure that there is no cooperation" between its army and the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (FDLR), a rebel group in eastern Congo that includes Rwandan Hutus suspected of aiding the 1994 genocide. To stave off disaster, MONUC chief Alan Doss has asked for a temporary increase of some 2,000 troops -- two battalions of soldiers, two companies of special forces and some police. The council said only that it "duly notes" the request. "The reality is that the Congolese army is not capable of protecting Congolese territory, so the protection of Congolese territory can really only be accomplished by MONUC," Anthony Gambino of the Council on Foreign Relations, a U.S. think-tank, told BBC radio. "MONUC does not have the forces to do that." A French plan to send in up to 1,500 European Union soldiers is under discussion but Germany is resisting, European diplomats told Reuters. Fabienne Hara of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank, said in the long run diplomacy and political dialogue take priority over reinforcing MONUC. She said it was time to put an end to the Congo-Rwanda proxy war in North Kivu and normalize the two countries' relations. Among the issues that need to be resolved, analysts say, are the large numbers of Rwandans living in eastern Congo, protection of minorities, the fate of refugees, sharing of mineral wealth and long-standing territorial disputes. (Editing by Alistair Thomson and John O'Callaghan)
Congolese refugees walk past U.N. peacekeepers outside the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo offices in Goma, October 30, 2008. REUTERS/Stringer (DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO) ...
