THE European Commissioner for humanitarian aid, Ms Emma Bonino, has accused the United Nations Security Council of scandalous indifference to the fate of thousands of refugees in Zaire.
"I really wonder how they can sleep at night," she said. "How do they explain their actions to their wives, to their children?"
Ms Bonino was speaking in Brussels after the Security Council in New York passed a resolution on Saturday that put off any immediate prospect of a multinational force being deployed in eastern Zaire.
"The states who prevented a force being deployed are an international scandal ... an international disgrace," she said.
The European Commission had wanted the council to adopt a resolution calling for the immediate creation of a multinational task force, but the United States - mindful of its ill fated involvement - in a similar force in Somalia - said it needed more time to study the options.
The council instead called on UN members to lay the groundwork for a multinational force but postponed a decision on deployment until November 20th.
"November 20 - which year?" said Ms Bonino, who left with a EU mission later for Zaire, to visit refugee camps in the east.
"The Security Council representatives should keep in mind that hundreds of thousands of refugees stranded cannot spend the weekend in Long Island, as they do," she said.
They fled to eastern Zaire after the massacre of up to a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda two years ago while thousands more escaped continuing violence between Hutus and Tutsis in neighbouring Burundi.
Thousands of them have now fled recent fighting between the Zairean army and Zairean ethnic Tutsis, backed by the Rwandan army. The conflict has spread death, fear and misery across a vast stretch of the biggest country in Central Africa.
Ms Bonino said Washington's reluctance to get involved in the conflict should not have delayed a Security Council decision on a force. "If they don't want to be part, then fine but don't stop the others," she said. But she stressed that any action needed to be UN driven, to give the situation the international impetus it so desperately requires.
Ms Bonino backed the idea of a force to patrol so called aid corridors so that relief can be given to the refugees. "We have the food for them," she said. "But we have to be able to get it to them. Every day, every hour is costing lives."