The Democratic Republic of Congo demanded the speedy removal of thousands of peacekeepers Thursday, insisting at a UN Security Council meeting that Kinshasa is ready to assume "full responsibility for its security."

Foreign Minister Raymond Tshibanda urged council members to respect his country's "legitimate aspiration" to assume full control of its security a decade and a half into a UN peacekeeping mission there.

But Martin Kobler, the head of MONUSCO, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in the DR Congo, cautioned that a gradual pullout of troops is needed to minimize the risk of renewed violence in the volatile central African country, home in recent decades to some of the bloodiest outbreaks of violence anywhere in the world.

Kinshasa's President Joseph Kabila has called for a major drawdown of MONUSCO forces, the UN's biggest peace mission.

But Kobler said that while the country may one day be stable enough to protect its people, it hasn't reached that point yet.

"MONUSCO will not stay in the DRC forever," Kobler said.

"However, more needs to be done to reduce the threat from armed groups and violence against civilians to a level that can be effectively managed by Congolese institutions," he said.

The DRC will only "achieve stability through the establishment of functional, professional and accountable state institutions and through strengthened democratic practices," he said.

The two sides have long been at loggerheads over the timetable for a removal of the UN troops. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in January proposed trimming some 2,000 peacekeepers from MONUSCO, while the DRC is seeking a more substantive immediate drawdown of about 6,000 troops.

In recent years, human rights groups and UN investigators have documented several cases of attacks on civilians by Congolese troops, including widespread rape, notably in the eastern part of the country.

UN officials also are pushing for aggressive efforts to disarm dozens of rebel and splinter groups still intact after two decades of conflict in the eastern DRC, much of it fueled by the lucrative trade in minerals.

Tshibanda said his country has made "major" political and economic progress and had succeeded in getting the upper hand over the Hutu rebels with the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, accused of fomenting unrest in the east.

The rebels are accused of having played a role in the mass slaughter that year of some 800,000 people in Rwanda -- mainly from the Tutsi minority, before a Tutsi-led rebel front seized power.

Kobler said the presence of armed groups in the east remain a concern as does "the overall security situation" in the DRC, which he said "is still not stable, let alone irreversible."

Many still live in fear of rape, fear of attack, fear of being robbed of already meager possessions," Kobler said.

"This fear affects every aspect of daily life."

Kobler also assailed the arrests several days ago of "over 40 civil society actors" saying that those detentions are evidence of insufficient "political space for civil society" that is needed in order to hold planned elections, which are scheduled for November.

In January, Kinshasa was rocked by bloody protests against a bill seen as an attempt to extend Kabila's 14-year-long hold on power.