UNITED NATIONS, October 4 (RIA Novosti) - With demobilization of rebels in the Democratic Republic of the Congo stalled, the UN Security Council unanimously agreed to a Press Statement, expressing the Organization's concern that the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) have failed to fulfill their promise to surrender and threatening the military action like that used against the M23 rebels.
"No further voluntary surrenders of members of the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda have happened and the FDLR have failed to deliver on their public promise to voluntarily demobilize," the members of the Security Council said in their statement. Trying to reinvigorate the disarmament process, the members of the Security Council threatened military action like that previously used against the March 23 Movement rebels.
The members of the Security Council also noted that the members of FDLR were among the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda and recalled that the FDLR "has continued to promote and commit ethnically based and other killings in Rwanda and in the DRC."
The Security Council emphasized that the government of Congo must guarantee "humane conditions" in all the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration camps, especially when it comes to protecting women and children. The members of the Security Council recalled their full support for the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) and called on all parties to cooperate fully with the mission.
The Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda is a Rwandan Hutu nationalist rebel group active in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 2000.
October 2 marked the half-way point of the six-month time frame for the voluntary surrender of the FDLR as set out by the joint International Conference of the Great Lakes Region and Southern African Development Community meeting of Ministers of Defense on July 2.
