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US Ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke said on Monday Washington would begin seeking Congressional approval for a UN military observer mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in the next day or two. Reuters quoted him as saying the subject would probably be discussed on Wednesday.
The US administration has promised to notify Congress two weeks before the final Security Council vote on a DRC peacekeeping operation which would require substantial US financing.
The current proposal is for 500 observers backed by 5,000 support and security staff. Holbrooke noted that despite the humiliating failures of past UN peacekeeping efforts in Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia: "the stakes were too high to ignore Congo's contagion of crisis". Holbrooke warned that failure to bring peace to a country the size of western Europe could
trigger Africa's first continent-wide war.
"If the conflicts there... spiral out of control, they could destabilise a broad swathe of central and southern Africa," Holbrooke said. "It is self-evident that if the UN does not do what it can to assist those who want peace in the Congo, the result will be a certain humanitarian and security disaster, he said.
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