Refugee chief visits Congo crisis

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The head of the UN refugee agency, Antonio Guterres, is due to visit the crisis-hit east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

UN officials say fighting there has displaced some 400,000 people in the past year.

It is part of a conflict that spreads across central Africa.

Mr Guterres is due to fly to the town of Goma on Congo's eastern border with Rwanda, after meeting President Joseph Kabila in the capital, Kinshasa.

One side to the conflict is a struggle for political power between ethnic Tutsis and ethnic Hutus, or forces allied to them.

Organised looting

Another is the ruthless search for eastern Congo's precious minerals such as gold.

This looting sometimes gives the outside world an impression of being completely lawless. But it is in fact a highly organised and profitable enterprise often run by the same men doing the fighting.

Both aspects of the conflict create refugees - people flee protection rackets which mount roadblocks and illegal taxation regimes, as well as actual shooting.

The latest fighting has seen an ethnic Tutsi warlord, Laurent Nkunda, take back positions he had earlier lost to Congolese government forces.

Mr Guterres wants to see for himself how bad the situation is

General Nkunda says he is protecting Tutsis, especially from an ethnic Hutu force based in the forests of Congo.

The government of neighbouring Rwanda says this Hutu force was involved in the genocide of Rwandan Tutsis in 1994.

According to the refugee agency, the UNHCR, there are a total of 800,000 people displaced by conflict in the Congolese province of North Kivu near the border with Rwanda.

Mr Guterres plans to visit some of them in camps and makeshift sites which UN officials say are reaching full capacity and will struggle to cope with any new arrivals.