UN 'misled' over DR Congo crisis

By Mark Doyle
BBC World Affairs Correspondent

The UN is entrusted with bringing peace to the region

The United Nations says it is looking into allegations that a UN document contained false information that caused instability in war-torn central Africa.

A former UN employee, the American intelligence analyst William Church, told the BBC the details were added to a public UN report by other UN staff.

The report stated Rwanda mounted a military incursion against neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo last year.

This false allegation endangered the peace process in DR Congo, he says.

'Serious allegations'

The stakes could not be higher.

The war in DR Congo, which has spread throughout central Africa, is one of the deadliest of our generation.

Over the past decade, four million people have died as a result of it.

The UN has now imposed an arms embargo on DR Congo.

A UN panel investigating that embargo reported in January that DR Congo's neighbour, Rwanda, had violated it by mounting a military incursion.

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The war in DR Congo

But a dissenting member of the UN panel, William Church, has now told the BBC that the Rwandan invasion was a false claim added by other panel members who had come under pressure from un-named sources.

The chair of the UN investigation, the Algerian diplomat Abdulahi Baali, has told the BBC that he is now looking into what he called "serious allegations".

All this matters because the UN has been entrusted with trying to bring peace to central Africa.

If there are disputes between UN employees about something as basic as one country invading another, that trust may be brought into question.