The network is more positive and more comprehensive than most media when it comes to its UN coverage; it reports in numbing detail a lot of stuff that rivals clip to a 10-second bite or dismiss entirely.

It must have come with a bit of a jolt for UN officials, therefore, when the friendly BBC did a number the other day on the Security Council mission that went off to Africa in a bid to find out why the conflicted Congo is so resistant to UN and other peacemaking efforts.

Barnaby Phillips, one of the foreign journalists who traveled with the 15 ambassadors, wrote the piece for a regular BBC World program titled "From our own correspondent," a consistently informative series, well worth listening to for its insights on international affairs by anyone with access to shortwave radio. If not, it's available online (bbc.co.uk).

Here are a few excerpts from Phillips's dispatch.

"A peace mission across Africa with the UN may sound glamorous; the fact is that we barely saw the places we were visiting, let alone heard what people were thinking." (Did anyone say, We, the peoples of the United Nations?)

"We moved across Africa in a bubble, surrounded by UN security officers -- meeting suave well-dressed presidents, foreign ministers and rebel leaders. They all professed their desire -- be it in French, Portuguese or English -- to end the dreadful war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Let's just say that some struck me as a little bit more sincere than others."

"In the Congolese city of Kisangani, we tried to break the mold. . . The ambassadors had decided to meet the people -- and hear what they had to say. All in 10 minutes, of course. . . They [the Congolese] did not so much tell us as shout that they wanted the rebels out, that they wanted a united Congo, and above all that they wanted peace. In fact they were still shouting as we got back into our bus and sped off.

"It was a sobering encounter -- a reminder that away from the hotels and the presidents, lives are at stake, and civil war is causing misery for millions of people."

The UN mission, said Phillips, was mainly a French and British show, with Ambassador Jean-David Levitte and Sir Jeremy Greenstock leading the way. "Even the American ambassador, Richard Williamson, took a back seat" -- except in Harare, where the mission tried to persuade the odious Robert Mugabe to pull his troops out of the Congo and Williamson got into a shouting match with the autocratic Zimbabwe president about the legitimacy of Mugabe's recent tarnished re-election. "'Unhappy with my elections?' he shouted at the American," reported Philips. "'I wasn't too happy with the conduct of yours.'" Meaning how the Supreme Court delivered George W. Bush's victory over Al Gore after the Florida snafu.

What about the results of the mission? "The trip did, as the ambassadors said, 'help to build trust,' 'hold a series of positive meetings.' [And] We've even got 'something to work with in the future,'" the BBC man reported.

He sums up. "I am getting a little weary of all that diplomatic speak. We journalists prefer a little bit more blunt talking. Come to think of it, at least President Mugabe gives us that."

How important the vast Congo nation is to France and French political and commercial interests in Africa may be judged by the decision to send Ambassador Levitte at a time when, back in New York, the Security Council was wrestling with the Israel-Palestinian flareup amid fears of wider warfare. Sir Jeremy Greenstock's participation was planned presumably to keep a cool British eye on the Frenchman, common membership in the EU having barely diminished the traditional rivalry and suspicions that have marked relations between Paris and London.

With so much competition from the West Bank and Jerusalem, not to mention Washington and Baghdad, the Congo's troubles were not a hot item for the mainstream media and the ambassadors' travels went largely unreported in the US. Thank BBC for filling the gap, somewhat.

Sharing planes, limos and buses with senior diplomats and coasting from one Muzak-equipped, heavily airconditioned luxury hotel to the next on this fact-finding excursion to darkest Africa, Phillips reported finding himself at one point, in steamy Luanda, and musing over "a nagging feeling that out there, life is just a little bit different for most Angolans." A lot different, as any fairly recent visitor to that tortured nation may attest.

Who is naive enough to imagine that a function of UN peacemaking is to get down among the poor, illiterate citizenry and ask what they want while their leaders squabble over the spoils of war?