KINSHASA - The United Nations must sustain its peacekeeping and aid role in Congo after historic elections on Sunday, as Lebanon and other conflicts threaten to divert resources away, a U.N. official said on Wednesday.
Ross Mountain, No. 2 in the U.N. Democratic Republic of Congo mission, said the international community should not make the mistake of thinking that elections alone would provide a quick solution to the country's major reconstruction needs.
Sunday's elections will be the first democratic multi-party polls in the former Belgian central African colony after four decades of dictatorship, war and chaos. They are costing the international community more than $400 million.
The vote will be the biggest and most expensive ever organised by the United Nations, which has its largest peacekeeping force in the world -- 17,000 strong -- thinly stretched across the country the size of western Europe.
Mountain said a debate was already under way within the United Nations about whether the mission should be cut back to allow peacekeepers and resources to be redeployed in Lebanon or Sudan's Darfur region, where such forces were now also required.
"I think it's a real danger," he told Reuters in an interview at U.N. mission headquarters in Kinshasa.
"I'd like to hope that the international community will see the value of sustaining this investment (in Congo)," he added.
He said there was a risk that if the United Nations withdrew or scaled back in the Congo too soon, the country could slide back into conflict. A 1998-2003 war had already killed an estimated 4 million people through violence, disease and hunger.
"Peacekeeping may be expensive, but try war, it's a lot more expensive," Mountain said. He added that organising and training a new national army remained a priority for after the elections.
President Joseph Kabila and 31 other contenders will be competing in Sunday's poll for the job of leading the mineral-rich country into what Congolese hope will be a new era of stability and prosperity after years of chaos and suffering.
"Congo Can Make It"
Violence by rebels and renegade militias in the east is threatening to disrupt voting in some areas and opposition parties have staged violent protests against what they say are irregularities and pro-Kabila bias in the election process.
Some of these complaints have been echoed by the powerful Congolese Catholic Church.
But Mountain said much had been achieved since the war.
"Look where we've come from four years ago: (then) the main protagonists for the presidential election were militia leaders who had divided up the country and their followers were killing each other in the hundreds," he said.
"Four years later, they've coexisted in a transitional government and they are now competing peacefully to lead the country."
Peaceful elections would mean Congo could attract investors and start to reap the benefits for its people of its reserves of gold, diamonds, copper, timber and other riches, Mountain said.
"There is at least the beginning of an understanding in the outside world that this is a country that can really make it," he said.
If no candidate gains more than 50 percent of the votes on Sunday, a second round at the end of October will choose between the two frontrunners.
Mountain hopes international donors will stump up the $40 million needed to hold a second round of voting if required.
"The U.N. has put its back into this, a lot of money, a lot of logistics. But it will depend on the day," he said. "Let's do it."
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