08 11 13 New York Times: Peacekeepers in Congo to Focus on another Rebel Group

The move could be instrumental in bringing some stability to a region
reeling from what has seemed like endless war.

The United Nations has sent its largest peacekeeping mission to the
country, including a 3,000-strong intervention brigade with a new, more
aggressive approach to peacekeeping. Rather than protecting civilians in
imminent peril, it is charged with going on the offensive and “neutralizing armed groups” before they cause more harm.

United Nations troops have already aided the Congolese Army in fighting
the M23, a feared rebel group, which United Nations experts have said is
supported by Rwanda.

On Tuesday, the M23 said that it would lay down its arms,
delivering a successful first test of the new intervention force.

Next, the United Nations force is expected to take on the ethnic Hutu
militia known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or
F.D.L.R., whose members Rwanda
holds responsible for the 1994 genocide.

Rwanda has repeatedly spoken
out against the Security Council for its failure first to prevent the genocide
and then to tackle the ethnic militia.

“It’s
an armed group. It’s a group of génocidaire,” the French ambassador to the
United Nations, Gérard Araud, told reporters after a meeting of the Security
Council on Wednesday.

“We
have to especially take care of the F.D.L.R.,” Mr. Araud said.

He went on to say that there was “general agreement” among Security
Council members to tackle the militia along with other guerrilla groups. It is
part of the mandate of the United Nations Mission in Congo to aid the Congolese Army in
its fight against armed groups operating in the country, and the mission’s
chief, Martin Kobler, said this week that it was prepared to defang them all,
Reuters reported.

Mr. Araud added that the Security Council would issue a presidential
statement spelling out the next steps that it expected the Congolese government
and United Nations peacekeepers to take to stabilize Congo, including the urgent need
for the Congolese government to extend its authority to the areas that had been
claimed by the rebels.

Mr. Kobler told members of the Council that 10,000 refugees and 5,000
others displaced from their homes inside Congo were on their way back home,
according to a diplomat in the room.

Meanwhile, Congo’s
ambassador to the United Nations, Ignace Gata Mavita, said his country would
meet with M23 rebel leaders in the coming days to sign what he called “a
document,” short of a peace accord.

The ambassador said later that his army was prepared to take on the
F.D.L.R. next.