UN agency registers 1,300 Congolese refugees for repatriation

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, in the Central African Republic (CAR) has registered 1,300 refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for repatriation, an official said told IRIN on Saturday. "DRC authorities will first consider the lists before authorising the repatriation," Emile Segbor, the agency's representative in CAR, said. The first of these refugees could, he said, begin returning in two months. He said 600 of them were in Camp Molangue, 140 km south of Bangui, the CAR capital, and another 700 in Bangui. The refugees requested repatriation. Segbor said one-third of them were from the Kinshasa area and the rest from Equateur Province, which borders the CAR to the east. There are about 10,000 Congolese refugees in CAR of whom 3,000 live in Camp Molangue. They refugees came to CAR in May 1997, when the late President Laurent Desire Kabila's rebels overthrew the government of President Mobutu Sesse Seko.