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08/26/2004:
"US Doubtful on 13, 000 More UN Troops for Congo"
ReutersUNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Washington is unlikely to support fully a U.N. appeal for more than 13,000 additional troops for the troubled U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo but no decision has been made, a U.S. official said on Wednesday. decision has been made, a U.S. official said on Wednesday.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan has recommended that the U.N. Security Council more than double the size of the mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo to 23,900 troops from its current authorized ceiling of 10,800.
Diplomats said there was a consensus in the 15-nation council that more troops were needed to keep Congo's shaky peace on track after a five-year civil war that killed more than 3 million people, most through disease and hunger.
But with demand for peacekeepers soaring and the U.S. budget drowning in red ink, U.S. envoy Stuart Holliday said Washington was focusing on the vast central African nation's troubled East, where armed groups and sporadic fighting remain a problem well after a 1999 peace agreement.
``I think it would be very difficult in this current climate to contemplate that full amount, but nothing has been ruled out,'' Holliday said.
``We think the issue is strengthening in the East, and as we look at what kind of size, we would contemplate we'll be pulling numbers from the secretary-general's reportlooking carefully at them,'' he told reporters following a closed-door council meeting called to discuss Annan's views.
The Congo mission will cost $746 million this year and Washington pays about a quarter of the U.N. peacekeeping tab.
While Annan offered no estimate of the cost of the additional peacekeepers, diplomats put the figure at $160 million or more, which would make the Congo force the most costly U.N. mission.
``There is a concern (in Washington) that resources are being overstretched, and we have a number of new missions on line,'' including a peace-monitoring force expected to be dispatched to Sudan later this year, Holliday said.
Are we so accustomed to hearing this kind of garbage from the US government that we are unable to recognize how insane it is?
