THE UN Peacekeeping Mission in Congo (Monuc) has said the date for talks between Congolese leaders and rebel General Laurent Nkunda to diffuse the conflict is yet to be set.

Monuc Spokesman, Major Vivek Koyal said on Friday the mission was busy pushing for the two warring parties to meet and fully agree on the ceasefire.

"The pressing issue at hand now is to convince the two sides that war is costly,” Koyal told The Sunday Times in an interview from Kinshasa.

He was responding to a question on whether Congolese leaders were ready to meet Gen. Nkunda to end the conflict in eastern Congo.

Nkunda’s troops have been fighting UN backed Congolese forces in the country’s east, leaving about 200,000 homeless. Rwanda has pledged to help try and mediate in the struggle between Nkunda and the Congolese government.

Nkunda says his mission is to protect his ethnic Tutsi community from being eliminated by Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) rebels. 

FDLR is a combination of former Rwandan soldiers and Interahamwe militias, who are blamed for the 1994 Rwanda Genocide.

The group has also been accused of committing gross human rights abuses for the past thirteen years they have stayed on the Congolese territory.

Since Thursday, the UN was still struggling to preserve a shaky ceasefire it brokered in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Nkunda accuses government troops of breaking the truce with an attack in Rutshuru district.

Meanwhile president of DR Congo, Joseph Kabila, and his Ugandan counterpart, Yoweri Museveni, were scheduled to hold talks yesterday in the Tanzanian capital, Dar es Salaam aimed at ending the Congo-Uganda boarder dispute.

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