The relief organisation, Refugees International, has said the recent positive developments in the DRC are having little immediate positive impact on the Congolese people. Anne Edgerton, who recently visited the region on behalf of Refugees International, told a US sub-committee that displacement was still occurring in remote areas as armies withdrew and redeployed to new territory in the country.

A United Nations Security Council delegation arrived in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday night on "the most important mission the Security Council has ever undertaken", in the words of the mission leader, French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte. In a brief statement at Kinshasa airport, Levitte said the 12 ambassadors in the delegation hoped "to help the parties in the Congo conflict move towards peace and a complete application of the Lusaka ceasefire agreement".

More than 1,000 trucks are stuck on the main route leading from the seaport of Matadi to Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), after heavy rains washed away large sections of the road, the BBC reported on Friday. Some of the trucks have been there for as long as 20 days, and the produce they are carrying - mostly much-needed fresh food for the capital - is rotting under the heat and rain of Congo's wet season.

OAU Secretary-General Salim Ahmed Salim has commented that peacekeeping missions often fail because they are ill-equipped and under-funded, AFP reported. Speaking in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam on Thursday, he said the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC was inadequate.