BRUSSELS, Feb 3 (Reuter) - The European Union's humanitarian aid chief, on return from a mission to Africa's troubled Great Lakes region, said on Monday she had personally seen mercenaries in Zaire. "All our information confirms that there are mercenaries from both sides in the region," Emma Bonino told a news conference. "On the Zaire side I saw mercenaries. We stayed in the same hotel," she said. "That is one of thecontradictions you are up against when you are in the humanitarian field." She said at least 200,000 refugees were still stranded in Zaire and that as many were still lost or dead in the bush. "At least 200,000 people are being exterminated in these camps," she said. Bonino was among world politicians who campaigned for an international force to come to the rescue of refugees caught by fighting between rebels and the Zaire army since last October. The United Nations abandoned the idea of the force after more than half of some 1.1 million Rwandan Hutu refugees in Zaire camps returned to their hom

eland following rebel victories last year. Bonino said on Monday the UN's inaction threw its credibility into doubt and that the inaction had been dictated by national concerns. "I would suggest that all these armchair strategists, that they visit these camps, that they look at the children dying of hunger in the eyes," she said. "The UN's credibility will not just be judged by meetings in air conditioned conference rooms." On Sunday Bonino described conditions at Zaire's largest remaining refugee camp Tingi Tingi, where Hutu refugees are trapped by war deep in the equatorial jungle in eastern Zaire, as beneath human dignity and said the international community should be ashamed. "It is frankly unacceptable that the best professionals in the military from the most important countries could not detect these people's existence," she told Reuters in an interview. On Monday she said she had seen with her own eyes refugees missed by the world's most sophisticated radar equipment. Renewed warfare between the rebel

s and a Zaire army now backed by hundreds of European mercenaries has again turned the focus on the plight of refugees in eastern Zaire.