UN Peace Operations

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast -- Ivory Coast's long-overdue presidential elections are set for next month, but doubts in the current leadership and protests are fueling fears of violence and delays.

The Oct. 31 election is being hailed as the first truly free contest in the country's history because all three historic political heavyweights - President Laurent Gbagbo, former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara and former President Henri Konan Bedie - are running head-to-head for the first time.

United Nations (CNN) -- Rwanda will not pull its troops from U.N. peacekeeping missions despite a leaked draft report that accused Rwandan soldiers of genocide in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwandan President Paul Kagame told the U.N. secretary-general Sunday.

Ban Ki-moon said that he and Kagame spoke about the Democratic Republic of the Congo Mapping Report, which is to be released in October.

UNITED NATIONS — UN chief Ban Ki-moon has thanked Rwanda's President Paul Kagame for keeping peacekeeping troops in Sudan, despite anger over looming genocide accusations against the Rwandan army.

Rwanda had threatened to pull out of all UN peacekeeping operations because of a UN human rights report, due to be released on Friday, on the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Kagame's government is furious because a draft of the report alleged the Rwandan army carried out genocide-style slaughters of tens of thousands of ethnic Hutus in DR Congo in the 1990s.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon has thanked Rwanda for dropping its threat to withdraw peacekeepers from Darfur.

Rwanda was furious after a leaked report accused its troops of committing genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The threat to the UN force in Darfur prompted Mr Ban to make an emergency trip to Rwanda earlier this month.

A United Nations preliminary report on recent atrocities in the Democratic Republic of Congo said Friday that three different militia groups raped 303 people over the course of four days. It says the militia arrived in villages pretending that they wanted to protect the population.

The U.N. preliminary report says 235 women are known to have been raped, 52 girls, 13 men, and 3 boys. It says many were raped numerous times.

The UN's human rights chief has said the "scale and viciousness" of mass rapes in DR Congo "defy belief", as a report into the attack was released.

Navi Pillay said that, even for the region, the incident stood out because of the "extraordinarily cold-blooded and systematic way" it was carried out.

Some 300 people were raped by armed militia in the attack in August.

U.S. President Barack Obama will attend a high-level meeting on Sudan Friday at the United Nations. Hosted by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and bringing together senior Western and African officials, the meeting is intended to focus international attention on Sudan in the lead-up to the January referendum which is likely to see Southern Sudan vote to secede from the North. 

OPINION: Oxford, England — Until recently, President Paul Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) were the international community’s aid darling, heralded for their role in stopping the 1994 genocide that claimed the lives of as many as one million Rwandans. They now stand accused of a long list of crimes.

GENEVA, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Rebel groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) responsible for hundreds of violent rapes are not being brought to justice in the vast, lawless country, United Nations officials said on Friday.

A report by the U.N. human rights office in Congo pointed to serious shortcomings by the Congolese army and police and said their failure to prevent or stop the attacks was compounded by further failings in the U.N. peacekeepers in Congo, known as MONUSCO.