"The United Nations stands ready to support the implementation of the agreement and looks forward to discussing the practical modalities with the parties concerned," UN chief spokesman Fred Eckhard said.

UN Security Council members, in a statement read by British Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock, the council president for July, called on the central African neighbors to quickly hold detailed talks with the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo on how the agreement is to be implemented.

"Council members look forward to examining the agreement in detail," Greenstock told reporters.

South Africa and the United Nations acted as guarantors for the deal signed in Pretoria on Tuesday, which they hope will mark the beginning of the end of Congo's devastating four-year civil war.

But few details have been made available on precisely how the pact is supposed to work.

As many as 2 million people have died in the Congo conflict, which has raged since 1998 and drawn in soldiers from Uganda, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Angola as well as Rwanda, which currently controls more than a third of Congolese territory.

As part of the deal, Rwandan President Paul Kagame pledged to withdraw all his forces from Congo within 90 days and to provide a detailed program for doing this within five days.

Congo's head of state, Joseph Kabila, agreed to help disarm the Rwandan Hutu gunmen and former Rwandan militias who fled to Congo after helping slaughter the Tutsi minority in Rwanda's 1994 genocide.

These forces would also be repatriated within 90 days under the accord.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan "welcomes the renewed commitment of the (two) governments ... to a mutually agreed settlement process, including a cessation of hostilities aimed at making concrete progress toward peace in the region," the UN spokesman said.

Separately, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said it hoped the agreement would pave the way for the return of tens of thousands of refugees who fled to neighboring countries to avoid the fighting in Congo.

It said most of the Congolese refugees were now in Tanzania and Uganda and had fled areas where Rwandan Hutu gunmen and former Rwandan army militias were now located.

(China Daily July 31, 2002)