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The UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), known by its French acronym MONUC, has trained 350 police officers to be deployed to the troubled northeastern district of Ituri, the MONUC spokesman, Hamadoun Toure, told IRIN on Wednesday.
MONUC's civil police instructors trained the new officers in techniques of securing people and property, as well as respect for human rights.
The MONUC military spokesman, Maj Abou Thiam, said, "The 350 officers comprise members of former belligerent groups now involved in the transitional government. They followed a training course for three months at camp Kampala, in Kisangani, in the province of Orientale."
Toure said between now and the end of the DRC's transitional phase, scheduled for 2005, MONUC must train 6,000 police officers.
In April, the government of France agreed to train 300 antiriot police to be based in the DRC capital, Kinshasa.
"The training [of the police officers] is part of an effort to restore unity on Congolese soil, just like the recent installation of the district commissioner of Bunia [the main town in Ituri], Mme Pétronille Vaweka, and four other administrators of the region," Toure said, describing the move as an "important step towards the reunification of the country".
Meanwhile, MONUC reported that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special representative in the DRC and head of MONUC, William Swing, was at UN headquarters in New York to discuss the extension of MONUC's mandate. Its original mandate is set to expire on 31 July.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
