Britain could send troops to Congo

"We have not ruled anything out. It is possible," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme following a two-day visit to the violence-hit African nation.

The head of the 17,000-strong UN peacekeeping force, its biggest ever mission, had arrived in the country to assess the situation, he pointed out.

"It is right to see this through the UN perspective," Mr Miliband said - a day after appearing to pour cold water on the suggestion that already-stretched British troops could soon be caught up in a new overseas entanglement.

The current conflict in the Congo has its roots in the genocide 14 years ago in neighbouring Rwanda where up to a million people were killed when Hutu extremists turned on their Tutsi neighbours. Some 250,000 people are thought to have fled their homes in recent weeks since the breakdown of a UN-brokered ceasefire in the region.

During their visit, Mr Miliband and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner held talks with both Congolese president Joseph Kabila and Rwanda's president Paul Kagame in an effort to persuade them to use their influence to bring the fighting to an end.

Mr Miliband said the engagement of the African Union "does offer some prospect that there will be a political engagement that makes a difference". But he said that in the short term it was vital to secure aid supplies from being plundered by rebel groups - tens of millions of pounds of which is being sent by the UK.

Mr Miliband will join fellow EU ministers for talks in the French port city of Marseilles amid calls from Oxfam for them to agree to send EU forces to the area.

International Development Secretary, Douglas Alexander later announced that the government was to fly out emergency aid to the stricken country. Mr Alexander, said: "The situation in the DRC remains extremely grave. Over 900,000 people have been forced to leave their home in North Kivu and there is now an urgent need for food, water and shelter."

The 90-tonne load will be made up of around 18,000 blankets, 11,000 plastic sheets and 24,000 plastic water buckets and some six million water purification tablets. The supplies will be sent to Entebbe in neighbouring Uganda on Wednesday and then transferred on to Goma on smaller aircraft.