Still no security guarantees for frontline deployment

To date, the UN Observer Mission in the DRC (MONUC) “had not got any guarantees from any combatant parties regarding the safe deployment of MONUC personnel in combat zones”, but anticipated that this would come in time, the mission’s chief information officer Lieutenant Colonel Pierre Massart told IRIN. The mission, with a mandate to prepare the ground for future UN interventions in support of the Lusaka peace deal, had now staffed its advance headquarters in Kinshasa and started to function, collecting situation reports from the teams of Military Liaison Officers (MLOs) that were now almost complete in seven capitals in the region: Kampala, Kigali, Bujumbura, Harare, Windhoek, Lusaka and Kinshasa, Massart said. MLO teams have yet to be deployed in Angola, an ally of President Laurent-Desire Kabila, and in the Central African Republic, a non-combatant country affected by the conflict.