An agreement has finally been reached for the UN to begin investigations into the alleged massacres of refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo. After months of wrangling between the UN and the Congolese authorities, Congo's President Laurent Kabila and the US ambassador to the UN, Mr Bill Richardson, announced at the weekend that the inquiry could start as early as next week.
Mr Richardson said he was "cautiously optimistic" that the UN team, whose probe has been consistently blocked by the Kabila regime, could now start its work. But he added: "We want to see actions, not just words".
The forces which brought President Kabila to power in May have been accused by human rights groups of slaughtering thousands of Rwandan refugees inside the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire).
Both Congolese troops and their Rwandan army allies are alleged to have taken part in massacres during the seven-month civil war which led to the overthrow of the dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko. Those who died are said to have been members of Rwanda's Hutu majority who fled into Congo to escape retribution for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda which claimed at least half a million people, most of them minority Tutsis.
The refugees are reported to have been killed by Tutsi soldiers out to avenge the genocide. Journalists and aid workers in eastern Congo during the months of April and May heard reports of massacres of Hutu refugees by Kabila's rebel army. Stories of carnage in Mbandaka in the west of the country were also in circulation in the days after the insurgents took the capital, Kinshasa. But the new regime made verification of the allegations difficult, if not impossible.
Now, at least one human rights group, Human Rights Watch/Africa, claims to have eyewitness and photographic evidence that "massive killings" of refugees took place. One Rwandan officer is quoted in the report `What Kabila is Hiding' as having said, "It's so easy to kill someone, you just go - (pointing his finger like a pistol) - and it's finished". President Kabila initially agreed to a UN inquiry, then insisted on conditions which the investigators termed unacceptable.
The EU and the US have been withholding millions of pounds in aid to the Congo pending agreement from the Congolese government that the inquiry could go ahead.
"This is a case of misunderstandings, confusion and blunders", said the Dutch Minister of Development Assistance, Mr Jan Pronk, who recently visited President Kabila. "Blunders also from the UN side".
The UN has been accused of insensitivity in its handlings of the inquiry which it originally wanted to cover only the period of civil war in Congo. Both the Congolese and Rwandan governments have been pressing for investigations to begin with the period prior to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. It has now been agreed that the scope of the inquiry should be from 1993 until the end of this year and that the UN team should also look into atrocities allegedly committed by the forces of former President Mobutu.