Politicians in the Democratic Republic of Congo urged improved weapons monitoring Monday to avoid UN restrictions on procuring weapons, as violence rages in the country's east.

The DRC has been subject to a United Nations arms embargo since 2000, originally imposed over widespread violence in the central African nation.

In 2008, the Security Council amended the sanctions regime to apply only to armed groups. The government must still notify a monitoring committee of arms purchases under the rules, however, which some in the DRC view as a bureaucratic hurdle.

On Thursday, the Security Council prolonged the regime by a year but also reduced the notification requirements for certain weapons purchases.

The move nonetheless triggered outrage in the DRC, where there have been calls to lift the UN restrictions amid a surge of clashes with M23 militia in the east.

The primarily Congolese Tutsi rebel group is one of scores of militias active in eastern DRC. Last month, M23 fighters captured the strategic town of Bunagana on the Congolese-Ugandan border.

Tembos Yotama, a local representative in the eastern North Kivu province, argued that the government should be allowed to purchase weapons with "no conditionality at all".

"When the UN imposes any restriction on the purchase of arms to a country facing a hundred armed groups, it is a way to weaken it further," he said.

However, Mike Mukebayi, a lawmaker in the capital Kinshasa, said the UN decision showed the need to improve the Congolese weapons-monitoring system, which he called "broken" and "obsolete".

Claudel Lubaya, an MP from central DRC, also urged improved weapons monitoring. He said the current disfunction was deliberate, because untraceable weapons "are a source of illicit and rapid enrichment".

Under the UN Security Council resolution passed on Thursday, the DRC's government must notify the monitoring committee of all purchases of mortars, grenade launchers, portable air-defence systems and anti-tank missiles.

The M23 or "March 23 Movement" first leapt to global prominence in 2012 when it briefly captured Goma, an important commercial hub of about a million people in North Kivu.

A joint offensive by UN and Congolese troops drove the rebels out in 2013. But after lying mostly dormant for years, the M23 resumed fighting last November after accusing the government of failing to honour an agreement to incorporate its fighters into the army.

The DRC has accused neighbouring Rwanda of backing the M23, which Kigali has repeatedly denied.

Ugandan private kills two soldiers in DR Congo's east
Beni, Dr Congo (AFP) July 5, 2022 - A Ugandan private deployed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) "inadvertently" shot two soldiers in a friendly-fire incident in the eastern city of Beni, an army spokesman said Tuesday.

The spokesman for joint Congolese-Ugandan military operations, Lieutenant-Colonel Mak Hazukay, told reporters that the shooting occurred on a highway linking Beni to the northeastern town of Kasindi in eastern DRC's Rwenzori region.

A Ugandan private "inadvertently fired ... on two of his comrades" on Tuesday morning, Hazukay said, without offering further details of the incident.

One Congolese soldier and one Ugandan soldier were killed, he added. The perpetrator is under arrest.

Ugandan troops first entered the DRC in late November to combat the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) militia.

Initially limited to the DRC's eastern North Kivu province, the Ugandan military operation expanded to neighbouring Ituri province in late January.

The Congolese and Ugandan armies are trying to guard the Beni-Kasindi highway, where a Ugandan company is carrying out construction work under an agreement between the two neighbours.

Claimed by the Islamic State group as its Central African offshoot, the ADF has been accused of massacring thousands of Congolese civilians and carrying out terrorist attacks in neighbouring Uganda.

ADF massacres have continued despite joint operations between Ugandan and Congolese troops. The militia is one of more than 120 armed groups active in conflict-torn eastern DRC.

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