U.N. presses Rwanda on rapprochement with Congo

By Patrick Worsnip

KIGALI, May 17 (Reuters ) The U.N. Security Council pressed Rwanda Sunday to stand by a rapprochement with neighbouring Congo and won assurances from President Paul Kagame he would pursue a course seen as key to ending violence in eastern Congo.

Envoys from the 15 council member states flew into the small east African nation to bolster a drive by the United Nations to help resolve years of conflict in the region and enable its peacekeeping force in Congo, the world's largest, ultimately to leave.

They will continue Monday to Goma, in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the capital, Kinshasa.

"We strongly encouraged the president to continue on that path (of better relations) as we will with (Congolese) President (Joseph) Kabila when we meet him," Britain's U.N. ambassador John Sawers, leading the delegation, told reporters.

"We've certainly come away reassured about the seriousness of it...but there's more work to be done."

Both Kagame and his foreign minister, Rosemary Museminoli, told reporters they were making a priority of ties with Kinshasa.

"We keep working with the DRC to examine what tomorrow we can work on together and how we can do things differently," Kagame said.

Rivalries between the two neighbours, which back different militias in the mineral-rich eastern Congo, long frustrated efforts to bring peace following a 1998-2003 war thought to have led to the death of more than five million people.