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Germany agrees to lead eu troops congo mission { March 20 2006 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1105AP_EU_Congo.htmlhttp://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1105AP_EU_Congo.html
Monday, March 20, 2006 · Last updated 11:41 a.m. PT
Germany to lead EU mission in Congo
By CONSTANT BRAND
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Germany has agreed to lead a European Union mission to send hundreds of troops to Congo when the African nation holds a series of landmark elections starting in June, the German Defense Minister said Monday.
After weeks of hesitation, Germany's Defense Minister Franz-Josef Jung said his country planned to lead an EU mission of up to 1,500 members, including troops from France, Spain, Poland and several other nations to support to United Nations peacekeepers stabilizing the country.
"We have together agreed that the command headquarters in Potsdam will take overall responsibility for the mission," Jung told Germany's Hessiche Rundfunk radio. "One can really talk of a European mission here."
However, Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Berlin was still waiting to get more commitments from other EU nations before giving the final go-ahead. He said the issue would come up at the EU summit in Brussels Thursday and Friday.
EU foreign affairs chief Javier Solana briefed European foreign ministers on his talks Sunday with political leaders in the Congolese capital, where he discussed the terms of the European mission.
"We are taking a long time to get prepared," Solana acknowledged.
Congo's coming elections are seen as key to ending years of strife and bring lasting stability to a nation that has known little but conflict, coups and dictatorship since independence from Belgium in 1960.
After a rule of nearly three decades, dictator Mobutu Sese Seko was toppled in a 1997 rebellion that brought Laurent Desire Kabila to power. The diamond and gold-rich central African nation then plunged into a four-year civil war that killed about 50,000 people, while another 3 million died of strife-induced hunger and disease. Joseph Kabila, 34, has been president since his father's 2001 assassination.
The U.N. has most of its 16,000 peacekeepers in Congo's unruly east and is seeking European troops to deter unrest in the capital during the elections and provide rapid backup to its blue-helmet soldiers if they run into trouble.
EU governments had been wary about committing soldiers, largely because of concerns that their forces could get dragged into a renewed civil war if the elections go badly. EU governments are expected to impose a four-month time-limit on their deployment.
Also Monday, Congolese rebel leader Thomas Lubanga was brought before The Hague's International Criminal Court, the first suspect to stand trial since the permanent war crimes tribunal was created nearly four years ago.
His arrest warrant covered crimes committed after 2002, when the court came into existence and Congo's civil war officially ended. Since then, 8,000 people have been killed and 600,000 displaced in Congo's eastern Ituri province, the court said.
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