Annan recommends extending MONUC mandate

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has recommended that the mandate of the United Nations Mission in the DRC (MONUC) be extended to 15 June 2001. MONUC’s current mandate expires on 15 December. If approved by the Security Council - which was meeting on the DRC on Friday - the extension would allow, as a first step, additional military observers and support units “if conditions both required and permitted such deployment”. As a next step, infantry units could be deployed to back up the observers.

However, Annan’s report drew attention to continued armed clashes in Equateur and Katanga provinces, stressing that “fighting, threatened to spill over into the Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic to the north, and Zambia to the south”. He also noted that a Security Council resolution demanding the withdrawal of Rwandan and Ugandan forces from the town of Kisangani had not been fully heeded. Annan suggested that a permanent mechanism be established to consider measures for dealing with the main issues in the DRC crisis, citing among others the withdrawal of foreign forces, disarmament of armed groups, and security of the DRC’s borders with Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi. [for further details, see separate IRIN story of 8 December headlined “Annan recommends six-month MONUC extension”]