THE UNITED Nations Security Council yesterday demanded a ceasefire in eastern Zaire after reports that Rwandan soldiers had invaded the town of Goma, near the Rwandan border.
In New York the UN Security Council called on the international community to come up with an urgent response to the crisis, although it failed to suggest concrete action to stop the fighting that has displaced more than half a million refugees and threatens to inflame the region.
So far all sides have ignored international calls for a ceasefire. Zaire's ragged army and allied Rwandan Hutu fighters are facing a humiliating defeat by well-armed rebels in the eastern provinces facing Rwanda and Burundi.
Rwandan troops were reported by diplomats yesterday to have entered the eastern Zaire town of Goma to assist Tutsi rebels, but the government in Kigali denied It.
There are RPA (Rwandan Patriotic Army) troops in uniforms in the centre of Goma city, the main square. They came in by land and across Lake Kivu on boats landing on the city beach," said one diplomat in the region, quoting witnesses.
We are 110 per cent certain the RPA is in Goma. It is confirmed," said another diplomat.
Over a million Hutu refugees have lived in camps in eastern Zaire since 1294 when they fled Rwanda fearing reprisals or an upsurge in civil war after the genocide of Tutsis there.
Cross-border exchanges between Rwanda and Zaire complicated plans by the UN to pull out staff from Goma, centre for efforts to help 1.1 million Rwandan refugees 200,000 Burundians and tens of thousands of Zaireans uprooted by the fighting.
Zaire says Rwandan, Burundian and Ugandan soldiers are fighting alongside the rebels.
The UN Security Council called for an international conference on the crisis but Zaire's UN representative Mr Lubaku Khabouji N'Zaji, told reporters his country would not attend as long as Rwandan troops were on his territory.
In Washington, the United States threw its weight behind a regional conference due to be held in Nairobi next Tuesday which is expected to discuss the situation in eastern Zaire. Kenyan state radio said on Thursday that leaders of Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Cameroon had been invited to the conference, although it did not spell out that Zaire would be the main topic.
Geraldine Kennedy adds: The Government is to contribute £1 million towards the alleviation of the crisis in central Africa from the National Lottery.
The money, from the Lottery beneficiary fund, will be used by the Government to provide humanitarian aid. It will be channelled through the Overseas Development Aid programme of the Department of Foreign Affairs.
The contribution is in recognition of the gravity of the crisis now facing the states of central Africa. It has been made possible by the substantial inflow of funds to the National Lottery over the past two weeks.
Unusually, the names of four members of the Government the three Coalition leaders, Mr Bruton, Mr Spring and Mr De Rossa and the Minister for Finance, Mr Quinn - were appended to the announcement.
. The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Ms Joan Burton, has invited EU ministers to a meeting in Brussels next Thursday to discuss humanitarian aid for refugees in the battle zone.