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LUSAKA - Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa said on Tuesday refugees sheltering in Zambia from the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo were fuelling border tensions and draining the country's meagre resources.

"There is growing tension on our borders, which is unacceptable. We are equally concerned with the levels of instability in your country," Mwanawasa told a visiting Congo delegation led by Justice Minister Ngele Masudi.

"There cannot be development in Zambia if there is no peace in the neighbouring countries. We have received refugees and spent our meagre resources on them," he said, urging the Congo to speed up peace initiatives.

Zambia is sheltering 255,000 refugees from the Congo and other conflicts in the region.

Mwanawasa's predecessor Frederick Chiluba negotiated a 1999 Congo peace agreement in Lusaka, which has been much violated. Congo President Joseph Kabila has revived peace efforts since taking over from his murdered father a year ago.

But the so-called inter-Congolese dialogue has been bogged down by the entrenched positions of belligerents and a lack of funding.

The former Zaire, Africa's third biggest country, has been in turmoil since Rwandan and Ugandan troops invaded from the east in 1998 and joined a civil war on the side of rebel groups.

The Congolese government has been backed by Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia in a war that has left some two million people dead from violence, starvation and disease.

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