OXFAM issued an appeal to European Union foreign ministers today to send troops to the Democratic Republic of Congo to avert a looming humanitarian disaster.
Foreign Secretary David Miliband and his French counterpart Bernard Kouchner are returning from a two-day visit to the region to join fellow EU ministers for talks in Marseilles.
In a joint statement they urged international action to bolster the existing 17,000-strong United Nations peacekeeping force and secure access for humanitarian aid.
However, they stopped short of calling for the deployment of EU peacekeepers to the region.
The current conflict in the Congo has its roots in the genocide 14 years ago in neighbouring Rwanda where up to a million people were killed when Hutu extremists turned on their Tutsi neighbours.
Some 250,000 people are thought to have fled their homes since the breakdown of a UN-brokered ceasefire.
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