The UN Security Council has canceled a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as envoys from five key members planned further talks on a new round of sanctions against Iran, diplomats said on Friday.
The official reason for the cancellation was the ash cloud from an Icelandic volcano that has caused air travel chaos across Europe, a UN spokesman said.
Several diplomats, however, said on condition of anonymity that intensifying talks on a fourth round of sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program also played a role.
“The Americans are very keen to get a resolution finished this month,” one diplomat familiar with the negotiations said. “It’s no coincidence that the [six] are meeting again Monday. It was a consideration in the decision to cancel the trip.”
Diplomats from the five permanent Security Council members — the US, Britain, France, China and Russia — and Germany are meeting almost daily as they struggle to agree on what punitive measures could be included in a resolution to put to the 15-nation Security Council.
It was not immediately clear if the Security Council would attempt to reschedule the canceled trip to the DRC.
Security Council members had planned to meet in Kinshasa with Congolese President Joseph Kabila, who has been pressing for a swift withdrawal of UN peacekeepers from the vast central African country with the approach of the 50th anniversary of independence this year and elections next year.
Kabila wants the DRC peacekeeping mission, known as MONUC, to start withdrawing within months and the last blue helmet out next year.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has proposed a slower three-year phased withdrawal.
Council members had hoped to press him in person to allow a more gradual exit of MONUC, which diplomats and UN peacekeeping officials say is vital to maintaining peace in the country’s turbulent east.
Since its establishment in 1999, MONUC has become the world body’s largest force with 22,000 troops and police, and assumed many of the responsibilities of the Congolese state, which was torn apart by a 1998-2003 war that killed millions.
However, local and Rwandan Hutu rebels still roam much of the two Kivu provinces in the east. Ugandan rebels continue to wage a campaign of terror in the remote northeast and a new rebellion has emerged in recent months in Equateur Province.
Meanwhile, all eight Red Cross staff workers kidnapped in eastern DRC last week have been released unharmed, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Friday.
The eight, a Swiss citizen and seven Congolese, had been held by a faction of the Mai Mai militia since they were seized during a mission last Friday to assess the needs of displaced civilians in South Kivu.
“It was an unconditional release as we have wanted all along and we are all very relieved that they are out without any harm to them,” said Inah Kaloga, communications coordinator at the ICRC in the DRC.
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