EU calm before Congo poll

Date: 22/06/06

On 30 July, a series of elections will begin in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with several hundred EU troops looking on from their base in the Congolese capital Kinshasa. They will be there to support the UN's 17,000-strong peacekeeping force in the event of disturbance.

Although campaigning has not yet started, at least one opposition party has said that it will boycott the vote and police have clashed with party supporters. The UN force still does not have control over the country's east and south and there is a race to disarm militia groups by a 30 June deadline.

But the EU is exuding confidence. If Europe's most senior officials are concerned about the upcoming elections , they are not showing it. During a recent visit to the EU mission's operational headquarters for the Congo operation, in Potsdam, Germany, foreign policy chief Javier Solana predicted that the mission would be "a great success" and a model for future missions.

The EU's envoy to the great lakes region, Aldo Ajello, has indicated that the Council's Political and Security Committee, which has political control of the mission, would stand poised to react if anything did go wrong.

Briefing the UN Security Council last week following a trip to Congo, French ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sabli� said the international community should be confident of a positive outcome, citing only technical difficulties ahead.

These are largely related to the size of the country, its poor infrastructure and lack of experience with elections.

But other observers said it was just these facts that made the upcoming period in Congo and the EU's task so difficult.

Ross Mountain, one of the UN secretary-general's chief representatives in Congo, described the difficulties faced by the international community in strong words. "It has been an enormous challenge, it is a country the size of Western Europe, without roads," he said.

"We have worked with the Congolese electoral commission to get 25 million electors when most people thought we would be lucky to get 15 [million].

"During the [December 2005] referendum...we had 32,000 voting booths, this time we will have over 50,000 and we will need to support something in the order of 60,000 electoral workers and 50,000 police. The logistics of this can be imagined. It is the largest electoral operation the UN has ever supported."

The EU has mustered a 260-strong election observation mission to oversee the elections, in addition to the military presence.

The European Commission has also funded the elections to the tune of 149 million euro. But according to Mountain, more is needed, because of the sheer scale of the project. "We are still short by something in the region of $46 million [36m euro] out of total of about $430m [342m euro]," he said.

Mountain warned that the stakes were high because the price of failure would be great.

"Congo is now at the crossroads, it has nine neighbours and it is a little hard to imagine a stable Africa without a stable Congo," he said.

Armand de Decker, the Belgian development minister, said it was crucial to start planning already for what would happen after the first democratic elections since Belgium quit the country 45 years ago.

"[If we look now to the post-election period] it will help to reassure the Congolese and make them more confident," he said.

Increasingly the EU is looking at how to speed up the process of brassage - disarming, demobilising and reintegrating militia into the nascent national security services.

Despite the general feeling of confidence in the EU, there is still some way to go.

Congo's election - key facts

• In the 1990s Congo saw two successive wars which killed an estimated four million people
• An estimated 1,300 people a day are dying as conflict continues
• 56 million people live in the country
• The country covers 2.34 million square kilometres, roughly equivalent to the size of Western Europe
• The European Commission has allocated 750 million euro in funding to the country since 2002
• The EU's military mission is planned to last for four months from 29 July
• An EU police mission in Kinshasa aims to train 1,008 Congolese police to ensure that the new government can govern
• The national Congolese Police is currently estimated to number 114,000
• In total 19 European countries will take part in the military mission dubbed EUFOR RD Congo. France and Germany will contribute most of the troops
• On 27 April Lieutenant General Karlheinz Viereck was appointed operation commander for the mission
• 132 people are located at the operations centre in Potsdam which will run the mission n 1,110 troops will be located 'over the horizon' in Gabon. If needed they can be deployed in 24 hours
• In the troubled eastern province of Ituri, where much of the fighting has taken place, there are an estimated 16,300 militia
• Sources: International Crisis Group, European Commission, Council of the European Union, United Nations mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo

Article anticipates the EU's mission in support of UN troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the elections scheduled for 30 July 2006.

Council of the European Union: Policies: Security and Defence: Operations: EUFOR RD Congo http://consilium.europa.eu/cms3_fo/showPage.asp?id=1091&lang=en

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