BONINO DESCRIBES HELLISH CONDITIONS ZAIRE

Patrick Srnyth, Brussels

The EU commissioner for Humanitarian aid Ms Emma Bonino yesterday made an emotional appeal to the international community to live up to its responsibilities in the face of a deliberately ignored catastrophe in eastern Zaire.

Ms Bonino who had just returned from its visit lo the camp of Kisangani, deep inside Zaire said she felt she had "just come back from hell" and described conditions "beneath any conceivable standard of human dignity. That posed a real challenge to the credibility of the United Nations".

Children "like skeletons", she said, wandered a camp of 200,000 people "who allegedly do not exist. The conditions were appalling with little water or food, temperature constantly above 35 C and a road access that was impassable to heavy lorries. In the forests there were almost certainly another 200,000.

In December when those responsible sending a multinational force to the region decided it was no longer needed it had been on the basis that the refugees had all returned to Rwanda, the commissioner said.

The humanitarian organisation had the disputed that contention 'but everyone was Happy to look elsewhere. it was inconceivable, however' Ms Bonino said :hat the most powerful military forces in the world, Which had at their disposal highly advanced technological capabilities, did not know that at there wore now 200,000 people.

She paid tribute to the work of the few NGOs struggling to bring relief and pledged the humanitarian arm would do what it could to restore the access road. But others must assume their too, she said, castigating US ambassador to Kigali, who, the commissioner said, urged urged the EU "not to feed those genocidal killers".

Such comments were unworthy of an important country, Ms Bonino said, urging such "armchair diplomats" to go to the camps and say such things directly to those starving children.

Zaire is expected to raise the issue this week at the the security Council.