"DRC applauds the initiative of the Secretary General of the United Nations to ask France to send a peacekeeping force to the Ituri district... where Hema and Lendu tribes are fighting," Okitundu said.

France told the UN Security Council earlier that it would take part in an emergency military operation there, but only if neighbouring Rwanda and Uganda asked for the force and assisted in its deployment.

However, Okitundu immediately added a rider to his remark, pointing at Rwanda and Uganda as being partly to blame for the clashes in Ituri district.

"The Hema and Lendu communities are being manipulated, there is an invisible hand. It is Rwanda and Uganda who are fighting on DRC territory to perpetuate the occupation and the plundering of our resources," he said.

He added that arms that had been found in the district did not belong to the DRC, but had come from Rwanda and Uganda.

The Security Council earlier endorsed an appeal from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan for member states to participate in an emergency military operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

President Joseph Kabila of the DRC signed a truce agreement in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, with five armed ethnic factions vying for control of his country's northeastern Ituri region.

The agreement, due to come into effect at midnight (2100 GMT Friday), provides for the cessation of hostilities, the cantonment of fighters, the demilitarisation of Bunia, Ituri's battle-ravaged capital, and the deployment of foreign troops in the region.

WAR.WIRE