{"id":8393,"date":"2013-06-11T02:10:11","date_gmt":"2013-06-11T02:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/u-n-chief-appoints-germany-s-martin-kobler-as\/"},"modified":"2013-06-11T02:09:57","modified_gmt":"2013-06-11T02:09:57","slug":"u-n-chief-appoints-germany-s-martin-kobler-as","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/u-n-chief-appoints-germany-s-martin-kobler-as\/","title":{"rendered":"U.N. chief Appoints Germany&#8217;s Martin Kobler as Congo Envoy"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-2939 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/gfr.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>{{U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed former German diplomat Martin Kobler on Monday as his special envoy to the volatile Democratic Republic of Congo, succeeding former U.S. diplomat Roger Meece in July.}}<\/p>\n<p>Kobler &#8211; currently U.N. special envoy in Iraq and previously deputy U.N. representative in Afghanistan &#8211; will head a 17,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo, which will shortly include a special intervention brigade of 3,000 troops tasked with neutralizing armed groups in the eastern border region.<\/p>\n<p>Congo has been battling a year-long insurgency by M23 rebels. U.N. experts accused Rwanda of sending troops and weapons across the border to support the M23 last year. Rwanda denies the accusation.<\/p>\n<p>Peace talks between the M23 and the Congolese government in Kampala, the capital of neighboring Uganda, have stalled. M23 is mainly made up of a previous Tutsi-dominated rebel group which integrated into the army following a 2009 peace deal.<\/p>\n<p>But they deserted en masse last year and have stepped up training in their strongholds in preparation for the deployment of the U.N. intervention brigade.<\/p>\n<p>The U.N. mission in Congo, known as MONUSCO, will also begin using surveillance drones in August to monitor the eastern border &#8211; a thickly forested area of rugged terrain with few roads, the United Nations has said.<\/p>\n<p>Countries in the region signed a peace deal brokered by the United Nations in February to try to end two decades of conflict in eastern Congo.<\/p>\n<p>reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{{U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed former German diplomat Martin Kobler on Monday as his special envoy to the volatile Democratic Republic of Congo, succeeding former U.S. diplomat Roger Meece in July.}} Kobler &#8211; currently U.N. special envoy in Iraq and previously deputy U.N. representative in Afghanistan &#8211; will head a 17,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[99],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-8393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8393\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8393"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=8393"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=8393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}