The European Union sidestepped an appeal by the United Nations on Monday to dispatch troops to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to avert a humanitarian catastrophe in the east of the country where war has displaced a quarter of a million civilians.
Although a statement by EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels said a formal response to the request from Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, would be forthcoming in due course, it was clear that differences among member states made the deployment unlikely.
