Britain’s Africa minister said yesterday that the UK could send troops to Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) if a fragile ceasefire between rebel fighters and the army fails.
Mark Malloch-Brown said Britain has a contingency plan to deploy forces to bolster the efforts of UN peacekeepers if violence escalates.
The foreign ministers of France and Britain flew into the DRC yesterday on an EU mission to try to secure peace in the east and help tens of thousands of civilians fleeing the conflict.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband were due to meet Congolese President Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa and travel to the eastern city of Goma, threatened by an offensive by Tutsi rebels last week.
The attacks by fighters loyal to rebel leader General Laurent Nkunda and subsequent killings and looting by Congolese army troops have driven thousands of families from their homes in North Kivu Province on the border with Rwanda.
Fearing more violence, the displaced civilians are seeking shelter, water and food in what aid workers are calling a catastrophic humanitarian situation.
Three days ago, Nkunda declared a ceasefire after his rebels fought to the gates of Goma, forcing back Congo’s army and UN peacekeepers. UN officials have said the truce is fragile.
Kouchner, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, and Miliband are due to look at the possibility of an EU humanitarian airlift into North Kivu that could be protected by EU troops on the ground.
The two European ministers will later travel from the DRC to neighboring Rwanda for talks with Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
The DRC and Rwanda have accused each other of backing rebel groups involved in the eastern Congo violence.
At talks in Kinshasa and Kigali, EU Development and Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Louis Michel obtained the agreement of Kabila and Kagame on Friday to meet at a summit to discuss the conflict.
The UN, EU and the US have been urgently lobbying the two leaders to make a lasting peace deal that will end any support for insurgent groups and pacify the violence-plagued region.
The UN said Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, who is African Union (AU) chairman, and AU Commission chief Jean Ping had proposed in telephone talks with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that a regional summit should be held over the Congo conflict.
Nkunda, who says he is fighting to defend the Tutsi minority in Congo’s east, abandoned a January peace deal and has called for a neutral mediator to negotiate.
An estimated 1 million people have been forced from their homes in North Kivu by two years of violence that has persisted despite the end of a 1998 to 2003 war in the vast former Belgian colony, which is rich in copper, cobalt, gold and diamonds.
The world’s largest UN peacekeeping force, 17,000-strong, is deployed in the DRC, but has been badly stretched by rebel and militia violence on several fronts and was not able to halt Nkunda’s rapid advance on Goma.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
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