Tens of thousands of refugees in the Great Lakes region have started returning home, but without adequate support they could reignite conflicts and end up joining the millions of people displaced within their own countries, a senior UN official said on Tuesday.

A summit of Africa's Great Lakes countries due in December has been postponed due to delays in the holding of general elections in Tanzania and a constitutional referendum in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the body organising the meeting said on Tuesday.

Delegates attending a session of the Regional Preparatory Committee on the International Conference on the Great Lakes have adopted peace and security documents as well as a non-aggression and mutual defence pact, Angola's state-owned news agency, Angop, reported on Thursday.

Local health authorities and UNICEF launched a drive on Monday to vaccinate 10 million children against polio in six provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) bordering Angola, Health Minister Emile Bongeli said.

The European Commission has decided to grant the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) four million euros to support its programmes protecting people displaced by armed conflicts, deprived of their freedom and separated from their relatives in three central African nations as well as in several nations in Asia, the EU Information Office announced on Monday.

Experts on peace and security from Great Lakes countries and international organisations began meeting in Nairobi on Monday to prepare documents that will constitute the Pact of Security, Stability and Development that heads of state of the region are to sign in November.

The first 100 of some 58,000 refugees who had been living in the Republic of Congo (ROC) in the past six years are due to begin returning to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)'s Equateur Province on Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the UN refugees agency, UNHCR, announced.

Although conflicts continue to smoulder in parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), most refugees could soon return to their homes in Equateur Province, in the northwest of the country.

Leaders of the 10 countries that make up the Congo Basin on Saturday concluded a treaty aimed at protecting the world's second largest rainforest.