The UN?s deputy chief urged peacekeepers in West Africato obey strict rules on sexual conduct as the world body tried to limit damage from a scandal involving its troops in Congo. Deputy secretary general Louise Frechette is touring UN peacekeeping operations in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast to drive home secretary general Kofi Annan?s zero-tolerance policy on sexual abuse.

?Our soldiers are advised to go by the rules and not have sex with any minor,? Frechette told reporters in Liberia?s capital Monrovia.

Investigators would look into all of them but it was too soon to say if any could be substantiated, the spokesman said. In Congo, the UN has investigated 150 allegations of sexual exploitation of women and girls as young as 12 or 13, including gang rapes, by some 50 peacekeepers.It banned its soldiers from having sex with Congolese last month as part of a new ?non-fraternisation? policy. Liberia is home to one of the largest UN peacekeeping missions, with some 15,000 soldiers.

<B>Humanitarian aid</B>

Three years ago, the UN refugee agency UNHCR was mired in a scandal when a report it commissioned said that scores of refugee children in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone had been subjected to sexual abuse in exchange for humanitarian aid.Frechette was due to visit the two other West African UN peacekeeping operations in Sierra Leone later on Wednesday and in Ivory Coast on Friday.

<B>Congolese outraged after UN troops kills dozens </B>

■ Ordinary Congolese are outraged at the killing of dozens of their compatriots by UN troops, saying the world body?s new get-tough policy on militias takes no account of civilian suffering. Many people in the troubled northeastern town of Bunia saw the killings as misplaced revenge for the deaths of nine Bangladeshi UN soldiers murdered by unidentified gunmen in the surrounding Ituri district last week. An estimated 50 people were killed in Tuesday?s battle in nearby Loga town between armed men from the Lendu ethnic group and UN troops hunting militiamen suspected of murdering Congolese civilians. Congolese said the clash showed the lives of peacekeepers counted for more than those of the Africans they were meant to protect in Ituri, where ethnic warfare marked by atrocities including cannibalism has killed 50,000 people since 1999. ?Nine people die and it triggers a huge bombardment, but how many thousands of people died here?? said Christophe, a businessman sitting astride his parked motorbike on a rutted pavement in this ramshackle mining town. ?How many people were eaten? How many people were burned and had their intestines cut out? And now nine people die and it becomes an issue where the whole world shakes.? The violence hit the headlines last week when militiamen shot dead the nine Bangladeshi UN troops near Kakwa village.

<B>WORLD TRADE ORGANISATION</B>

Ministers meet to push trade talks

Trade ministers from around the world gathered at a beach resort on Kenya?s Indian Ocean coast yesterday to inject fresh momentum into global free trade talks ahead of a looming deadline for a deal. The World Trade Organisation?s (WTO) 148 member states are working to reach an outline accord by July on the current Doha round of talks ? which could spur global economic growth and lift millions out of poverty if successful.

?The atmosphere is very positive,? Kipkorir Rana, a deputy director general of the WTO, told Reuters at the Leisure Lodge hotel outside Mombasa, the venue for the two-day meeting. ?What is needed now is some kind of political push from the ministers to keep the negotiations on track and for people now to start getting into details,? he said.

Few delegates expect major breakthroughs at the talks in Kenya, but negotiators at the Geneva-based WTO are hoping for guidance from their political leaders to help them start striking deals as talks progress. The WTO wants initial pacts by the end of July in pivotal areas, including farm and industrial goods trade, services and development issues, which could clear the way for a ministerial conference to approve a draft deal in Hong Kong in December. According to that plan, the round could be finished in 2006.

Disputes between rich and poor countries over farm subsidies and market protection had threatened to derail the round, launched in late 2001, but a blueprint approved in Geneva last July set out broad principles for continuing work. WTO officials hope countries will start to produce concrete plans in Kenya to comply with an end-May deadline to improve their initial concessions on trade in services ? which account for 60 percent of global economic activity and include areas as diverse as health, education and construction.

Rich countries are also pressing for sharp reductions in tariffs on industrial goods ? referred to as Non-Agricultural Market Access (NAMA) ? in part to compensate them for concessions they may have to make in agriculture. ?I?m quite confident that we?ll make good progress in this meeting,? Pakistani Trade Minister Humayun Akhtar Khan told Reuters, before attending a dinner in Kenya?s Masai Mara game park with other ministers on Wednesday evening.

<B>Focus on industry, services</B>

?We expect to focus more on NAMA and services, because agriculture already has got a lot of progress ... We will try to achieve a balance,? he said. Poor countries represented by the more than 30 ministers expected to attend the meeting are anxious to preserve preferential access to rich-world markets that they fear may be eroded by general reductions in tariffs.

They also want the European Union to make good a promise made in July to stop directly subsidising farm exports so as to give poor farmers a better chance in world markets, although the offer is conditional on other rich nations making concessions.

?What we are expecting is that by the next conference in Hong Kong we?ll get a real result about the phasing out of export subsidies, especially for cotton,? said Samuel Amehou, ambassador to the WTO for cotton-exporting Benin.

<B>David MAGERIA</B>