KINSHASA (RWANDA) - WESTERN diplomats rushed on Saturday to prevent a humanitarian disaster in conflict-torn eastern DR Congo (DRC), holding crisis talks with the presidents of the DRC and neighbouring Rwanda.

Rights campaigners meanwhile called for the International Criminal Court to probe what they called serious and widespread human rights violations during the recent fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The French and British foreign ministers, Bernard Kouchner and David Miliband, arrived in Rwanda on late Saturday for talks with President Paul Kagame to seek his support for a four-day-old ceasefire in the eastern DRC province of Nord-Kivu.

They had earlier met DR Congo President Joseph Kabila, while Belgium's foreign minister Karel De Gucht and the top US diplomat for Africa, Jendayi Frazer, had also held talks with Kagame.

'We had a good meeting,' said Mr Miliband of their 90 minutes with Kabila.

'The key theme of our discussion has been the need to implement the agreements that have already been made,' he said.

'Around the world, people are seeing the makings of a humanitarian crisis and it's vital that politics is used to reverse a further round of deaths and killings,' he added.

Mr Kouchner and Mr Miliband also visited a camp for displaced persons near Goma, the regional capital of Nord Kivu, where the recent fighting between rebels and government forces has taken place.

The French minister said they would report back to European Union member states after their trip.

'We are going to try to convince them that fresh aid must be made available,' he said.

Goma, where tens of thousands of civilians have taken refuge, is surrounded by the rebel fighters of Laurent Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP).

Government forces abandoned Goma on Wednesday as the rebels advanced on the city, leaving just 850 United Nations peacekeepers between Nkunda's forces and Goma. But the CNDP was for the moment observing a unilateral ceasefire.

The DR Congo government has accused Rwanda of supporting the rebels, which Kigali has repeatedly denied.

Both Mr Kabila and Mr Kagame agreed on Friday to an emergency summit in Nairobi organised by the United Nations and the African Union.

On Saturday, Mr De Gucht urged Mr Kagame to use his influence to ensure the fragile truce was respected, said a Belgian foreign affairs spokesman. Mr Frazer also met Mr Kagame, a source at the Rwandan president's office said.

'President Kagame informed his guest of Rwanda's position on the conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and reiterated that Rwanda was not involved in the conflict,' said the official, who asked not to be named.

But Uruguayan military commander Jorge Rosales, who is overseeing the peacekeeping troops in Congo, said on Friday the rebel CNDP was backed by tanks and artillery from Rwanda.

'These (rebel) troops are backed by tanks, something that general Nkunda had not had until now,' he said.

Uruguay contributes 1,300 troops to the 17,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission, the biggest in the world.

'On the ground, it's catastrophic,' EU Development and Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Louis Michel told France's Europe 1 radio on Saturday.

'Some elements of the army are looting and committing atrocities of all kinds, leaving the people to suffer,' he said.

'The rebels are accused as well of behaving the same way.'

The International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH) called for the ICC to open a fresh investigation into events in the Kivu region.

FIDH said in a statement government troops fleeing a rebel advance 'carried out pillaging, summary executions and rapes on the civilian population' in and around Goma.

Further north, Nkunda's rebels had pillaged camps for displaced persons, it said. Their account echoed earlier reports from UN officials.

Earlier this week, UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay called for government action after Kabila's troops were accused of going on a rampage of looting, killings and rape in Goma.

Some 220,000 people have been displaced since fighting broke out in August, bringing to more than one million the number forced from their homes in Nord-Kivu, a province bordering Rwanda that totals five million.

Nkunda, who says he is protecting the Tutsi population, has accused the DRC army of colluding with Rwandan Hutu rebels of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) in the Nord-Kivu region. -- AFP