Congo cease-fire holding, U.S. diplomat says

(CNN) -- Both sides in the Congo rebel fighting that has displaced thousands of people seem committed to maintaining the days-old cease-fire, the top U.S. diplomat for Africa said Saturday.

Children eat bread and porridge at a camp for displaced people 12 kilometers north of Goma in Congo.

Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer, in an interview with CNN International, was asked whether troops of the Democratic Republic of Congo and followers of rebel Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda were intent on disengaging their forces.

"So far, yes," Frazer said from Kigali, Rwanda, one of Congo's neighbors.

"I think we're starting to move down a political track, but I certainly do think that it's very fragile," she said.

Frazer's comments came on a day when the United Nations and other relief agencies delivered food and water to a refugee camp north of Goma, where Nkunda established a narrow "humanitarian corridor" after the cease-fire started Wednesday.

Tens of thousands of hungry people scrambled and fought Saturday for their first meal in several days.

Foreign Affairs Correspondent Jonathan Miller of Britain's Channel 4 videotaped the "complete pandemonium" in the Kabati camp for displaced persons about 10 miles north of Goma, where he said people were "desperate, scared, hungry."

In one area, aid workers were handing out biscuits -- but only to children.

"You see how desperate the needs are. People haven't eaten in several days, since they fled Monday and Tuesday. It's a drop in the ocean," said an unnamed aid worker.

There were thousands of people beyond the camp that aid workers were unable to reach, the worker said.

A woman at the camp told Miller: "Since I left my home village ... I haven't eaten anything. We can't go back home because we fear those who forced us to flee. They're killing us, and they're raping the women."

The Kabati camp's population grew from 1,000 to about 50,000 over a few days this week as people fled the advance of rebel soldiers.

The United Nations' refugee agency estimated Friday that 1 million people had been displaced by the recent fighting.

Getting Nkunda's National Congress for the Defense of the People back into a political process, ensuring regional and international cooperation and enforcing the cease-fire are most important to returning eastern Congo to stability, Frazer said Saturday.

Both sides need to return to promises made in peace agreements signed in 2007 and early 2008 in Nairobi, Kenya, and Goma, capital of North Kivu province, according to Frazer.

Under the Nairobi accord, the Congolese government, among other things, agreed to rout Rwandan Hutu extremists who fled to eastern Congo after the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

The Tutsi government in Rwanda, in turn, is being pressured to stop supporting the Congolese rebels in Rwanda.

Frazer and diplomats from Britain and France have been shuttling between Goma and Kigali, meeting this weekend with leaders to determine how a peace process can get back on track.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband was in Congo's capital, Kinshasa, with his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner. He said of the humanitarian crisis, "It is essential it ends immediately. There is only a political solution to this." Watch Miliband respond to questions about the crisis »

France holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, which is weighing its options, officials have said.

"We're not at the moment looking at adding British troops to Congo" but want to be sure the 17,000 U.N. troops in the country are deployed most effectively, Miliband said.

Earlier Saturday, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown also stressed the need for a political solution.

"My worry is about the thousands of people being displaced at the moment by the violence that is taking place," he said in a statement from Britain's Foreign Office.

Britain's Africa minister, Lord Malloch-Brown, did not rule out the use of EU troops in the region.

He told BBC radio, "I think we've certainly got to have it as an option, which is on the table and developed if we need it, but frankly the first line of call should be deployment of the U.N.'s own troops from elsewhere in the country ... but we have to have plans. If all else fails, we cannot stand back and watch violence erupt."

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