The European Commission announced Thursday it was providing 4 million euros (5.1 million dollars) in emergency aid to the Democratic Republic of Congo, as diplomats raced to find ways to help stop unrest in the African country, according to dpa. The European Union's aid commissioner, Louis Michel, met Congolese President Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa on Thursday and planned to meet his Rwandan counterpart, Paul Kagame, in Kigali on Friday, officials in Brussels said. Kagame held talks over the phone with the EU's top diplomat, foreign policy chief Javier Solana, on Thursday. "We urgently need a ceasefire to stop the chaos and the suffering of the ordinary people in Kivu," Michel said. Kivu is a region in eastern Congo that has seen heavy fighting recently. The EU emergency aid is designed to help the most vulnerable people that have been caught up in the fighting between the Congolese armed forces and the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), which has left at least 40,000 people homeless over the past few days alone. Representatives from the EU's 27 member states were due to hold talks in Brussels on Friday to explore the idea of sending peacekeeping troops to the region. dpa nr ncs
