If he will make a statement on the situation in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The situation in the eastern DRC remains unstable, although fighting recently seems to have subsided. However, human rights abuses continue and the humanitarian situation remains critical for many displaced civilians. The UK is pressing all sides to calm the situation.

As my hon. Friend knows, some 3 million to 3.5 million people have been killed in that part of Africa in the past five or six years alone, which is, in a continent of disasters, perhaps the greatest disaster of all. As we rightly make Africa the priority in our chairmanship of the G8, we should urge the international community to focus on that particular part of Africa, support the work of the United Nations and do everything we can to bring international pressure to bear to achieve a political solution. We should also use our relationship with Rwanda to urge it to keep its troops out of the DRC and to play a more constructive role in bringing peace to that country.

We keep in close touch with Rwanda regarding its activities in the eastern DRC. There is no hard evidence of Rwandan troops having been there recently. As regards the international community, we and our main allies are well aware of the Congo's central significance to stability in Africa, and my hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the scale of the catastrophe that has occurred there. MONUC—the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo—has recently been strengthened and is the largest United Nations mission anywhere in the world. The international community is making a major effort because, like my hon. Friend, we recognise the possibilities there. It does, however, require political will on both sides of the argument, and that cannot necessarily be supplied by the international community. Nevertheless, we can encourage, and we do. We can also discourage people on the ground from doing bad things, and we do that too. The most important priorities in the Congo are these: first, to start to integrate the army and the various armed bands that exist there into a unified army and stop them preying on their own people; and secondly, to make progress towards an election, which is scheduled for June.