The New York Times

Monday, January 31, 2000

U.N. Faces Big Challenge in Any Congo Peacekeeping Mission

By BARBARA CROSSETTE

When an unusual meeting of African leaders and the Security Council ended last week, there was general agreement that the United Nations will have to be given a major role in bringing peace to Congo. But when, and in what form, are still open questions that are expected to dominate council discussions in coming days.

On Jan. 17, Secretary General Kofi Annan, a former director of United Nations peacekeeping, recommended that the Security Council, which has already authorized sending 500 cease-fire monitors to Congo, add 5,537 troops. This would include infantry as well as medical, communications, mine-clearance and air and water transportation experts for a nearly roadless region. The startup cost is estimated at $41 million.

In his report, Mr. Annan said that 960,000 Congolese have been displaced by the war and that they and another 300,000 refugees from other wars in the region are dangerously short of food.

Diplomats and United Nations officials say they see in Congo's complicated war a challenge like no other that the organization has faced since the Balkans disintegrated into ethnic warfare after the collapse of European communism.

Within the United Nations, even the word Congo has tragic resonance. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold died on a Congo peace mission in 1961 when his plane crashed in what is now Zambia.

Richard C. Holbrooke, the American representative, called the unusual meeting of African presidents and ministers as January's council president. He has been telling United Nations officials and members of Congress that the Congo operation may be the United Nations' last chance to prove it can get peacekeeping right. That was the message he delivered directly to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on its recent field trip to New York.

But other diplomats say that this assertion masks another problem. Unless the United States allows the Security Council and the United Nations peacekeeping department to mount a credible operation in Congo, they say, the organization will be in danger of repeating its experience in Somalia and Rwanda, two regional conflicts that it proved unable to bring under control.

In the case of Rwanda, where a genocidal war in 1994 first disrupted the region and drew Congo into the fighting, the United States prevented the Security Council from acting for several months. Mr. Holbrooke says he is determined that this will not happen again. But he also accepts that he has two huge tasks ahead. The Clinton Administration has agreed to give Congress 15 days notice of Security Council resolutions creating United Nations peacekeeping operations, for which the United States is billed more than 30 percent of the costs.

So Mr. Holbrooke will have to persuade reluctant members of Congress that skimping on Congo will lead to disaster. Congress already has a law on the books saying that the United States will limit its payments to 25 percent, and often balks at that.

At the same time, Mr. Holbrooke has been urging African leaders, on a trip there in December and in the Security Council in January, to take more responsibility for the region. Without political will in Africa, he tells them, nothing the United Nations tries can possibly work. A few Africans left New York last week saying they felt "bullied."

Last July, African nations involved in the Congo war joined the government of President Laurent Kabila in Lusaka, Zambia, where they agreed on a peace accord. A month later they were all back at war. By the fall, they were clamoring for international help, a message delivered most bluntly last week by President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. He supports Mr. Kabila's government in its war with rebels who are, in turn, backed by Rwanda and Uganda.

In Security Council speeches last week, and in a statement of purpose that followed the meetings, African leaders coupled their calls for United Nations peacekeepers with new pledges to put their Lusaka agreement into practice. Britain's representative, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, welcomed African commitments to peace. But reflecting the skepticism of many at the United Nations, he noted that the world had been pleading with Africans for action for some time, but "frankly, they weren't listening."

The deep divisions between Congo and its neighbors, evident even in public speeches last week, were reportedly even more pronounced in closed-door meetings among the African leaders, Mr. Annan and American and other officials and diplomats. One Western official said that by the end of the council deliberations on Wednesday there was "blood on the floor."

Considerable attention was focused last week on Mr. Kabila, who made his first trip to the United States and apparently went home less convinced of American support for his enemies, Rwanda and Uganda. Mr. Kabila's American public relations aides were elated with his trip and say that he plans to return in May, hoping to talk with American companies about more investment in Congo.

Western diplomats and American officials see hope in economic pressures. All the nations involved in the Congo war are now feeling the costs of that involvement and are looking for a way to withdraw without a loss of dignity, officials say.

The political will to take that step, the Secretary General's report says, is not only what matters most but is also the basic condition for peace.