The United Nations, frustrated by repeated standoffs with the new government in Kinshasa, is recalling a human rights team dispatched five weeks ago to investigate allegations of massacres in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced Wednesday that the world body would temporarily “withdraw the investigative team for consultations, pending final clarification” by the Congolese government of what research the team would be permitted to undertake.

The three-member team led by Atsu-Koffi Amega of Togo, and its entourage, would depart from the capital, Kinshasa, as soon as possible and return to New York, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said.

Annan made his decision just one day after Congo President Laurent Kabila told reporters in Zambia, that he wanted the investigators “to vacate immediately” and accused them of filing false reports. “These investigators are just issuing statements from posh hotels in Kinshasa,” Kabila argued. “They have failed to go these areas to prove the massacres took place.”

U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson responded that Kabila’s comments, if formally confirmed to U.N. officials, “would make the present position of the investigative team untenable.”

U.N. officials denied that Kabila’s statement – which they were unable to confirm outside of media reports – had played a role in the recall of the team. Eckhard said the United Nations was not backing down in the face of criticism by Kabila and insisted that investigators were frustrated that they had not been allowed to conduct their necessary work.

“We can’t win in this thing, can we?” the U.N. spokesman said. “The team has been in Kinshasa for well over a month, and has been unable to carry out its mandate.” After repeated delays in allowing the investigators to visit what are suspected to be important massacre sites, he added, Annan decided it was time to pull the team out and press for their access rights before bringing them back to Congo.

The United Nations insists that it still intends for the team to carry out its task of verifying reports that thousands of Hutu refugees from Rwanda and Burundi may have been killed by Kabila’s rebel Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (AFDL) when it defeated what was the armed forces of former Zaire.

Congolese officials have been unwilling to allow the team to travel to several suspected massacre sites, notably the western town of Mbandaka. Kinshasa insists it will only allow travel to eastern Congo, where the refugees had resided since 1994 and where the atrocity reports first circulated, while U.N. officials say that such a restriction would impede investigators from visiting many potential massacre witnesses.

The United Nations, however, has to tread carefully with the Kinshasha government at a time when the world body is already criticised in the region for having done too little to prevent the 1994 genocide of as many as one million people in Rwanda. Much of the current investigation, on the other hand, concerns the deaths and disappearances of Rwandans accused of involvement in the genocide, such as the former Rwandan Army and ‘Interahamwe’ paramilitaries.

Congolese Foreign Minister Bizima Karaha argued at the U.N. General Assembly Wednesday that such armed Rwandans were never separated from legitimate refugees and that their continued presence in what was then eastern Zaire caused problems for the entire region. He added that the government would not allow the present concern over the AFDL’s human rights record to be used as an excuse to repeat “the terrible U.N. intervention” in the Congo in 1960.

Sensitivity over that U.N. mission, which occurred at the same time as the ouster of popular Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and eventual rise to power of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko – who died in Morocco last month – continues to haunt the world body’s work in the Congo.

The intervention and the U.N. reaction to the Rwandan genocide were cited by Robinson among examples of occasions “when the international community has not cared enough at certain periods.” As a result, she added, “we must take a stand on (the massacre reports), but we have to do it credibly,” taking into account the fragility and political wariness of the Kinshasa government.

That has been a tough balancing act. Although Annan and U.S. Ambassador Bill Richardson repeatedly have communicated with Kabila and urged for patience in dealing with Kinshasa, both in recent days have argued that time is running out. U.N. officials believe some massacre evidence has already been destroyed, and human rights groups contend that the world body has allowed Kabila too many concessions.

In particular, said Binaifer Nowrojee, counsel for Human Rights Watch/Africa, the United Nations “set a very dangerous precedent” by replacing an earlier team headed by Chilean lawyer Roberto Garreton, who had openly criticised the AFDL, with Amega’s group. Annan also allowed the team to investigate massacres dating as far back as 1993, as Kabila desired, rather than only examining the reports of AFDL-linked atrocities dating back to mid-1996. Those concessions, however, only raised more demands by Kinshasa.

Discussions on Wednesday between Annan and Karaha failed to unblock the team’s route to the massacre sites. Some diplomats here have siad privately that, regardless of negotiations with the Kabila government, the Rwandan government – which provided it key military support during its brief war against Mobutu – will not allow any inquest into the attacks on the ex-Army and Interahamwe forces.