Increased prospect of MONUC access to government areas

The UN Observer Mission to the DRC (MONUC) has been given some hope of progress on its wish to deploy military liaison officers (MLOs) in particular government-held areas, according to IRIN sources on Tuesday. While junior defence minister Dieudonne Kayembe last week dismissed as “tendentious and full of lies” a UN briefing paper to the UN Security Council, and blamed MONUC for adopting as their own statements made by the Ugandan- and Rwandan-backed rebel movements, that reaction may have been aimed at sparking a more proactive approach to the conflict by the UN, sources in the DRC told IRIN. Perhaps in acknowledgement that MONUC elicited more reports from rebel-held areas where it had MLO teams than government-held areas where it had not been allowed to deploy, Kinshasa was thinking of allowing MONUC access to the government-held towns of Mbandaka, Mbuji-Mayi and Lubumbashi, they added.