US envoy says UN aiding corrupt Congo government

The United States ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said on Wednesday that UN peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo are aiding a government that is “corrupt and preys on its citizens” as negotiations for the mission’s renewal continue, Reuters has reported.

“The UN peacekeeping mission is mandated to partner with the government,” Haley told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “In other words the U.N. is aiding a government that is inflicting predatory behavior against its own people. We should have the decency and common sense to end this.”

Haley’s comments came two days before the expiration of the mandate for the $1.2 billion mission in the central African state, known as MONUSCO. The confidential Security Council negotiations on its renewal are taking place amid U.N. warnings that violence is spreading across Congo ahead of planned elections before the end of 2017.

The United States wants the troop cap to be cut by a quarter to 15,000, diplomats said, and despite a request by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to add two extra police units – 320 officers – Washington does not want to change the current total of 1,050.

Adding to the tensions was the announcement this week that villagers had discovered the bodies of two U.N. investigators and their Congolese interpreter who went missing this month in Kasai Central province, an area engulfed in a violent uprising.

Resource-rich Congo, which gained independence from colonial power Belgium in 1960, has never had a peaceful transition of power. President Joseph Kabila’s refusal to stand down when his final term expired in December raised fears the chronically unstable country could slide back into civil war.