The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, said yesterday that withdrawal of a UN inquiry into the massacre of refugees in the former Zaire was a "grave setback" in the fight against those who commit atrocities.
The United Nations announced earlier that the UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, had "reluctantly" agreed to withdraw the UN team because of obstruction by Kinshasa.
Mr Annan's decision came after the killing of a key Congolese witness on March 30th in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), but the detention of a Canadian team member last week appears to have been the last straw.
Mrs Robinson said the team's pullout "underscores the need for an international criminal court".
Such a court should have the political clout and resources to "bring to justice the perpetrators of the worst violations of human rights and international humanitarian law", Mrs Robinson said.
Adding to the implied criticism of the regime of the DRC President, Mr Laurent Kabila, she said that the lack of co-operation shown to the UN team clouded international hopes for improved human rights in the country.
"The United Nations' effort to end impunity and inject accountability required the full co-operation of the authorities in Kinshasa. . . Sadly, that co-operation was not fully given."
Mrs Robinson added that the United Nations would be watching carefully the treatment of DRC inhabitants who helped the aborted inquiry and will seek assurances that they will not suffer consequences for their assistance.
The UN team was looking into massacres of Rwandan Hutu refugees as the rebel Zairean forces of Mr Kabila swept across the country during his successful 1997 bid to oust the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and declare himself president of the renamed Democratic Republic of Congo.
According to a preliminary UN report on the alleged massacres, up to 180,000 refugees may have been killed, with 68 per cent of the suspected massacres blamed on Mr Kabila's rebel Alliance, 16 per cent on Mobutu's armed forces and nine per cent on soldiers and Rwandan Hutu militia.