United Nations: India has completed deployment of some 3000 troops to reinforce the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). They are being sent to the troubled Kivus province at a time when tension between Congo and Rwanda is mounting.

The United Nations said yesterday (Nov 29, 2004) that the deployment of the Indian troops was completed on Wednesday (Nov 24, 2004) and that New Delhi is also providing four attack helicopters, six utility helicopters and four observation helicopters for use of the mission, known by acronym MONUC.

Pakistan is also sending around the same number of troops but their deployment would be completed only in January 2005, the world body said.

Set up five years ago, MONUC is mandated to monitor implementation of a ceasefire agreement signed in 1999 by the DRC along with Angola, Namibia, Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

Most recently, the Security Council asked MONUC to undertake a number of other tasks, including maintaining a presence in the "key areas of potential volatility in order to promote the re-establishment of confidence, to discourage violence and to allow UN personnel to operate freely, particularly in the eastern part of the DRC".

Meanwhile, Congo announced that it is sending some 10,000 troops to the country's border with Rwanda in north Kivus province as reports began circulating that Rwandan forces might have crossed the border. One report said that there had already been clashes between the forces of the two countries.

Rwanda alleges that Congo has not done enough to neutralise Rwandan rebels, who are Hutus who took part in 1994 genocide in which around 800,000 Tutsis were killed.