British Foreign Secretary David Miliband has played down the prospect of British troops being sent to the Democratic Republic of Congo to bolster the United Nations peacekeeping force. Mr Miliband, who flew into the beleaguered central African state with French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner in an attempt to help find a diplomatic solution to the worsening crisis, said it was up to the UN to ensure aid reached the tens of thousands of refugees forced to flee the fighting.

Earlier, however, Foreign Office Minister Lord Malloch-Brown disclosed that contingency plans were be drawn up for the deployment of a European Union force - including UK troops - amid fears of a looming humanitarian catastrophe.



"The first line of call on this should be the deployment of the UN's own troops from elsewhere in the country," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "But we have got to have plans. If everything else fails we cannot stand back and watch violence erupt. Britain is currently the so-called standby country which would indeed need to contribute."



However, with UK forces already stretched fighting on two fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq, Mr Miliband sought to pour cold water on the suggestion that British troops could soon be caught up in a new overseas entanglement. "We are not at the moment looking at sending British troops to join the UN force," he told reporters during a visit to a refugee camp in eastern DRC.



Nevertheless the fact the ministers are willing to discuss the possibility that British troops could be sent to the region will be seen as an indication of just how serious the situation has become.



Some 250,000 people are thought have been displaced in recent weeks since the breakdown of a UN-brokered ceasefire in the region.



The rebel leader General Laurent Nkunda has said that he returned to arms in order to protect his Tutsi community from Rwandan Hutus who fled to DRC after carrying out the Rwandan genocide of 1994. However his own forces - which are now poised on the outskirts of the regional capital, Goma, after DRC government troops fled in the face of their advance - have also acquired a reputation for murder, rape and looting.



Mr Miliband and Mr Kouchner - who earlier met the Congolese president Joseph Kabila for talks in the capital Kinshasa - are flying on to Rwanda for further discussions with the country's president, Paul Kagame.



Mr Miliband and Mr Kouchner hope that they can persuade the two presidents - who have now agreed to meet - to use their influence to bring the fighting to an end. "We know that while humanitarian aid depends on security, security depends on a proper political process. That's what we were discussing," Mr Miliband said.

An upsurge in fighting between rebels loyal to Laurent Nkunda and the army since August has displaced more than 220,000 people in a region already home to about 800,000 more displaced. Nkunda's fighters advanced to the doorstep of Goma Wednesday, forcing UN peacekeepers and the bedraggled army to retreat in tanks and commandeered civilian cars.



The rebels declared a unilateral cease-fire on Wednesday night and diplomats have rushed to secure it.

Jendayi Frazer, the senior US envoy for Africa, also said the UN mission was too understaffed and too dispersed to maintain peace. She said the UN mission "does have the capability to support the civilian population, but certainly additional strength has been needed for some time."



EU Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Louis Michel, who held talks with Congo President Joseph Kabila in Congo's capital, Kinshasa, proposed a UN-organized summit of the nations bordering eastern Congo, and said Rwanda and Congo would attend. Rwanda's presidency said no date had been set and gave no details.



Mr Michel said such a summit could create a roadmap toward a "permanent solution" for the violence.



UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has also urged the warring parties in eastern Congo to start negotiations in a neutral venue to restore peace.