"The deadline for the demands has passed," said Colonel Gerard Dubois, the spokesman for the French-led European Union security force that issued the ultimatum at the weekend.

Final details and the geographic limits of Operation Bunia Town Without Arms were laid out at meetings with Thomas Lubanga, the leader of the rebel group dominant in Bunia, where inter-ethnic clashes claimed hundreds of lives last month.

According to a map Dubois showed to journalists, the ban covers a very rough circle with a radius of less than 10 kilometres (six miles).

Lubanga was permitted to retain an armed escort at his Bunia headquarters of some 30 men, but even this security contingent is not allowed to display its weapons on the streets of the town.

Dubois said that an undisclosed number of additional armed men attached to Lubanga's Union of Congolese Patriots would be escorted by a separate UN mission out of Bunia later Wednesday afternoon.

The spokesman has repeatedly said that any visible weapons found after the deadline would be confiscated, but has never specified exactly how this would done.

WAR.WIRE