Nairobi/Kinshasa - The Congolese government has said that it does not want Indian peacekeepers to be among the 3,000 troops the United Nations has agreed to send to help stop fighting in the east of the sprawling Central African nation. "There are already enough Indian troops in Congo, and the UN reinforcements should come from other countries," government spokesman Lambert Mende told the BBC on Wednesday evening.
Around a quarter of the 17,000 peacekeeping troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo are Indian.
Some of these Indian peacekeepers have faced accusations of sexually abusing children and gold-trafficking.
The UN has approved a boost to the peacekeeping force in DR Congo (MONUC) to help protect civilians and maintain a fragile ceasefire.
Former UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland told the BBC that the 3,000 new troops were not enough and said the lack of commitment to resolving the crisis was due to discrimination against Africa.
Egeland is one of 16 prominent individuals, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former South African leader FW de Klerk, to sign a letter calling for the EU to deploy a force in DR Congo.
Fighting between Tutsis loyal to rebel general Laurent Nkunda and government troops exploded into full-scale conflict in October after beginning to ramp up in August.
Over 250,000 civilians have been displaced since August as results of the clashes, creating the potential for a humanitarian catastrophe, aid agencies say.
The UN said that civilians caught in between the warring forces have suffered at the hands of all parties.
"All belligerents have committed serious atrocities against civilians, and these include widespread looting," Alan Doss, the secretary-general's special representative to the DR Congo, said in a report to the UN Security Council.
He said that undisciplined elements on both sides of the war have attacked and destroyed refugee camps, forced inhabitants to flee and carried out targeted killings, some of them ethnically motivated.
Women and children have suffered most from the recurrent fighting," he said. "Sexual violence is rampant, and many armed groups continue to recruit children into their ranks."
Nkunda called a ceasefire and pulled his troops back from the front lines in mid-November after meeting UN special envoy and former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo.
Obasanjo is due to visit the DR Congo again this weekend.
Despite the ceasefire, some small clashes have been reported between Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) and the pro-government Mai Mai militia over the last few days.
The DR Congo accuses Rwanda of backing Nkunda, who says he is fighting to protect Tutsis from Hutu militia who fled to the DR Congo after Tutsi forces seized power in Rwanda.
The armed Hutu groups were implicated in the 1994 massacres in Rwanda, when 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed.
