European, U.S. Envoys Visit E. Congolese City

GOMA, Congo, Oct. 31 -- European and U.S. diplomats toured a landscape of misery in this war-battered city Friday as more than 200,000 people displaced by a rebel advance languished in vast sprawls of banana-leaf huts, sleeping in open fields or on the sides of roads.

Many of those who fled the fighting this week have been trying to make their way back to homes in the area that fell to rebels, and some people have not eaten in days.

"We are afraid," said a woman trudging with others in a long line up a hill toward her village. "We do not know what the rebels will do."

The United Nations' deputy representative and humanitarian coordinator, Ross Mountain, said the situation could become "catastrophic" if a fragile cease-fire struck Wednesday between the rebels and government forces does not hold.

Several European countries, including France, Britain and Germany, have privately rebuffed a U.N. appeal for the deployment of multinational forces around Goma to help restore calm.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said this week that a European rapid-reaction force, composed primarily of French and German troops, could send 1,500 troops to Goma within 10 days. But Germany has resisted the idea, and France has voiced concerns about deploying troops in close proximity to Rwanda, which has a history of poor relations with the French.

France, Britain and other European governments are considering a more limited international role, providing military support to help transport more humanitarian aid to the region.

At a meeting of troop-contributing countries Thursday, U.N. officials were told that for now they would have to make do with the 17,000 U.N. peacekeepers stationed in Congo. U.N. officials say that only about 6,000 of them are posted in the volatile North Kivu province.

U.N. investigators, meanwhile, said they have uncovered evidence of atrocities in Goma, including an attack on a family that left five dead, four wounded and a child missing. In another incident, a government soldier killed a man and his 8-year-old son. Military authorities reportedly arrested the soldier.

"The main perpetrators of looting, killings and rapes appear to have been renegade soldiers belonging to the national army," Navanethem Pillay, the U.N. human rights commissioner. "Other serious abuses . . . have been reported from areas held by forces" loyal to rebel leader Laurent Nkunda.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees cited reports that several camps housing nearly 50,000 displaced civilians in North Kivu were "forcibly emptied, looted and burned."

"Hundreds of thousands of people who have already suffered far too much are in danger and in desperate need of help," said António Guterres, the agency's chief.

In Congo's capital, Kinshasa, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi E. Frazer met Friday with Congolese President Joseph Kabila. Frazer then headed to neighboring Rwanda, which has close ties to Nkunda.

Congolese officials have accused Rwanda of supplying Nkunda with weapons and soldiers. On Wednesday, Rwanda lobbed shells into Congo, which effectively helped Nkunda's advance. The Congolese army retreated, leaving rebels at the gates of this provincial capital.

Rwanda denies backing Nkunda but shares his stated cause: disarming ethnic Hutu militias, including many that fled into eastern Congo after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which Hutu militias slaughtered 800,000 Tutsis.

Lynch reported from the United Nations.