By Janet McEvoy

BRUSSELS, Nov 7 (Reuter) - The European Union, pilloried for inaction in face of a world crisis, failed on Thursday to agree a joint initiative to help more than a million refugees in eastern Zaire. France and Spain remained isolated in their willingness to contribute troops if a U.N.-backed neutral force is formed to ensure security for aid distribution, without which offers of help are virtually meaningless. While Rwandan refugees fleeing fighting began dying in the mountains of eastern Zaire, a meeting of EU development aid ministers could agree only to send a new fact-finding team to the area. The meeting issued a declaration that they were ready to act in any way necessary, but it failed to produce any new ideas on how to deal with the deteriorating situation which analysts fear could destabilise a large swathe of Africa. Ireland's Overseas Development Minister Joan Burton said the EU would examine demands for fresh humanitarian assistance as soon as non-governmental organisations operating in the regio

n came up with specific requests. EU aid chief Emma Bonino stressed that it was up to the U.N. Security Council to create the conditions necessary for humanitarian aid operations to resume. "We are prepared...we can go tomorrow...only we are forbidden," she said. While aid agencies like the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees which have seen the deteriorating situation in Africa's Great Lakes region on the ground left the 15 ministers in little doubt as to the need to act, the question still remained how? Bonino said enough food, shelter, transport and personnel were in the region, but the onus was on the Security Council to take action to protect humanitarian corridors. British Overseas Development Minister Lynda Chalker said in her opinion aid could go in unprotected. "It can not be for development ministers to commit military people. That has to be decided by prime ministers," she said. "What we have now done is to lay the plans for the help that will go in as soon as it can be put in. I personally think

that it may be possible to go in without protection." Germany joined other countries in effectively rejecting the Franco-Spanish proposal. Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel said the task of protecting refugees should be left to African nations. The EU's special envoy to the region Aldo Ajello said conditions were right for at least 900,000 Rwandan refugees to return to their country, although some might not choose to return and could not be forced to. "At least 900,000 could go back without any problems and the rest we will see," he told a news conference, pointing to reforms in the Rwandan judicial system. The 15-nation EU has offered to help create and finance an African force, but seven regional leaders meeting in Nairobi on Tuesday said they wanted the United Nations to create a "neutral force" to come to the rescue of the refugees. Shortly before the Brussels meeting started, France accused the international community of being "spineless" as it vented its frustration at the poor response to its proposal. Th

e U.N High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, said a "neutral force" should be empowered to arrest and disarm militias and other groups operating in lawless eastern Zaire. "I would like to see them empowered to do that," Ogata told Reuters. The UNHCR has been widely criticised for feeding and sheltering the leaders of the Hutu-inspired killing of up to a million Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. Several then fled, along with hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees into eastern Zaire after their government's defeat. Ministers stressed the need to avoid repeating the errors of 1994 and make sure refugees were separated from troublemakers.