United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon left here Wednesday for Kenya to participate in an emergency summit of the African Union on the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Ban told reporters that at the UN-backed summit, he will "sit down with President (Joseph) Kabila (of the DRC) and President (Paul) Kagame (of Rwanda), and encourage them to find a path to peace."
The UN chief said he had been on the phone daily, many times daily, with world leaders working to resolve the conflict in the DRC.
According to the Kenyan Foreign Ministry, the summit on the situation in the DRC has been scheduled for Friday in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya.
Humanitarian agencies have described as "desperate" the situation of people displaced following fighting last week in North Kivu in eastern DRC.
The number of people forced to flee their homes, at 250,000, represented one fifth of the population of North Kivu. Many were women and children.
The World Health Organization has called for more assistance to respond to the most urgent needs, while the World Food Program said it would start distributing 10 days of rations for 135,000 people in six camps around Goma, the provincial capital of North-Kivu.
Amid worsening security, the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC) has begun reinforcing its troops in North Kivu and in Goma in particular, UN Under-Secretary-General of Peacekeeping Alain LeRoy told a news conference in Goma.
On Tuesday, Ban asked the UN Security Council to consider sending an additional 3,000 peacekeepers to the DRC, on top of the about 17,000 already there.
Source:Xinhua
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