The Zambian President, Mr Frederick Chiluba, mediator in the Congolese conflict, announced yesterday that the UN would begin deploying a long delayed peacekeeping force on February 26th.
"We welcome this move and we hope the UN will also move quickly on matters of disarmament in the Congo," Mr Chiluba told a summit to revive the stalled peace process in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Belligerents in the 30-month old war signed a peace agreement in Zambia in 1999 but implementation failed to take off because the government in Kinshasa would not allow the deployment of UN peacekeepers.
The UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, said the UN force in Congo would comprise 500 military observers protected by close to 2,500 troops - fewer than the 5,037 troops authorised a year ago.
The announcement came as four African leaders and the heads of the Democratic Republic of Congo's splintered rebel groups met behind closed doors at a regional summit yesterday to study fresh proposals to end Africa's most dangerous war.
Aides said the presidents of Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe and the Congo were studying proposals including specific security guarantees for Rwanda and Uganda, whose troops advanced into the region in August 1998, sparking a war that has entangled at least six African states.
The presidents made no public comment at the start of the talks with rebel leaders Mr Alphonse Onusumba and Mr Ernest Wamba dia Wamba.
Mr Chiluba said before the start of the talks that his plan for bringing peace to the Congo involved implementing a disengagement plan and the deployment of UN peacekeepers to police the truce and reassure Rwanda and Uganda on border security.
Analysts said the absence from the Lusaka meeting of Rwandan and Ugandan leaders, who back Congo's rebel groups, meant little headway was likely.
Congo officials said that President Joseph Kabila, catapulted to power by last month's assassination of his father, Laurent Kabila, would make new proposals to signatories of the failed 1999 agreement.
Mr Kabila held informal talks with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and Mr Chiluba before yesterday's formal opening of the Lusaka summit, Zambian Foreign Ministry officials said.
Mr Mugabe set a hard tone for the summit, telling reporters the "aggressors" Rwanda and Uganda must pull their armies out of the Congo before progress could be made towards peace.