Congo's President Joseph Kabila said Thursday that his country's voters must accept a proposed post-war constitution later this month if elections are to be held in 2006.

The search for possible victims of an earthquake near the lakeside town of Kalemie in eastern Congo (DRC) continued along the shores of Lake Tanganyika on Tuesday, humanitarian and provincial authorities in Goma, capital of North Kivu Province, said.

The French charity, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) says that the army in northern Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has blocked relief workers from entering the area since beginning a military campaign against local militias there in mid-November.

The lower house of parliament in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the National Assembly, passed on Tuesday a law granting amnesty to people who have been blamed for acts of war as well as political offences.

Members of parliament from Congolese President Joseph Kabila's party walked out of the National Assembly, the lower chamber of Parliament, on Monday, blocking a vote on amnesty that, if passed, would have benefited those behind the death of Laurent-Desire Kabila, former president and father of the current leader.

Some 60,000 people fleeing fighting between the Congolese army and local Mayi-Mayi militiamen resisting demobilisation have now arrived in the village of Dubie in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Katanga Province, Roman Catholic Bishop Fulgence Muteba said on Tuesday.

The Police Department of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) presented at a news conference in the capital, Kinshasa, on Monday three of its officers who are suspected of killing a journalist and his wife in November.

The head of an advanced team of nine EU observers of a constitutional referendum set to take place in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on 18 December declared on Monday that he would make an exhaustive and unbiased assessment of preparations for the vote.

Some 1,000 people who had fled their homes to live in the Democratic Republic of Congo's capital, Kinshasa, for six to nine years have returned to their villages in the provinces of Equateur in the northwest of the country and Orientale in the northeast, humanitarian aid workers said on Thursday.

In the latest joint UN-Congolese army military operation that started on Monday in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) military officers say at least 40 militiamen and three government soldiers have been killed and these figures are likely to rise.