The American ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke, has made a grim assessment of the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Fighting has continued there between rebels and the government despite a peace accord.

Mr Holbrooke, who was speaking in Kinshasa following talks with President Laurent Kabila, said although both sides still pledged their support for peace, there was little progress towards it.

Mr Holbrooke said UN soldiers would only go to Congo when there was a clear and effective peace to keep.

He said all sides in the conflict had agreed for the urgent need for a mediator. The Organisation of African Unity is scheduled to meet on Tuesday to try to find one.

Earlier, the Democratic Republic of Congo had delivered a message of defiance to rebels and their allies as it prepared to meet Mr Holbrooke.

Congolese Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Yerodia rejected Mr Holbrooke's remarks that all sides in the conflict had violated the ceasefire.

He said peace would not be accomplished as long as the rebels' allies - Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi - remained on Congolese territory.

"It is absurd", Mr Yerodia said. "Is he saying that the Congolese armed forces have to keep their arms folded while the aggressors advance and pillage the country's resources?"

On Friday, Mr Holbrooke held "complex and detailed"

New doctrine

The United States has done its best to stay out of African conflicts since the embarrassing failure of the American-led UN humanitarian mission to Somalia in 1992.

It has taken steps to train African peacekeeping forces and, under President Clinton who made a high-profile tour of Africa two years ago, urged Africans to solve their problems themselves.

But within months of the ousting of the late President Mobutu of Zaire in May 1997, two wars had broken out among the very allies who had engineered the dictator's downfall.

In Rwanda, Mr Holbrooke held talks with the leadership while also visiting a genocide memorial site and two humanitarian projects backed by the United Nations.

For Washington, the immediate objectives for peace in the Congo are clear: the government and rebels need to agree as soon as possible on a facilitator to instigate a national dialogue.

The newly-arrived UN liaison teams must be given free access to all parts of the country to prepare the ground for a bigger UN operation next year.

Economic development

And the joint military commission, made up of representatives of the countries and rebel movements involved in the conflict, has to be more aggressive in monitoring the current ceasefire and addressing violations.

President Clinton regards a peaceful and co-operative Congo as central to his efforts to encourage an African economic revival.

Mr Holbrooke said: "These wars, if they are left unchecked, leave the rest of the world with a monumental bill for refugee relief, reconstruction, and resettlement. That money ought to go to economic development."