(Adds Bemba going to Portugal for treatment, paragraphs 4, 13-14)

By Joe Bavier

KINSHASA, March 27 (Reuters) - Up to 600 people were killed last week in fighting between the army and a former rebel leader's forces that "seriously wounded" Congo's young democracy, European Union ambassadors said on Tuesday.

Fighting erupted in Kinshasa on Thursday after troops loyal to former presidential candidate Jean-Pierre Bemba refused an order to disarm. The clashes continued for two days before Bemba's forces were routed.

"There are fairly clear indications coming from the hospitals and morgues that are giving the number (of dead) at between 200 and 600," German ambassador Karl-Albrecht Wokalek told a news conference.

Bemba remains holed up in the South African embassy, with an arrest warrant for high treason hanging over him, but a top diplomat said he would go to Portugal to receive treatment for a neck injury.

Pretoria said he had made no formal request for asylum.

It was the first fighting in Kinshasa since a presidential election last year aimed at restoring peace to the mineral-rich central African state after a 1998-2003 war.

President Joseph Kabila won Congo's first democratic poll in more than four decades.

British Ambassador Andy Sparkes, one of around a dozen European envoys who spoke to journalists at a briefing, said the violence had damaged the democratic process.

"This is not necessarily the death, but the process is seriously wounded," Sparkes said. "We want to see a real re-engagement on the part of the authorities to accept the legitimate and important role of the political opposition.

"Mr Bemba, in an election we consider credible, won 42 percent of votes ... The security of this country is, to some extent, linked to what happens to Mr Bemba," he said.

HUNTED DOWN

The EU ambassadors issued a joint statement in which they condemned the "premature use of force" and one of the envoys said there had been "disproportionate use of military force".

Congolese authorities issued a warrant for Bemba's arrest on Friday, blaming him for starting the violence. Kabila said on Monday those behind the unrest would be hunted down and he had nothing to negotiate with the opposition leader.

South Africa's U.N. ambassador Dumisani Kumalo, whose country played a major part in the peace deal to end Congo's war, told reporters at the United Nations Bemba was expected to go to Portugal on Saturday.

He did not say what would happen to him afterwards.

Earlier South African Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad said Bemba was entitled to remain in the Kinshasa embassy for as long as necessary and he expressed hope U.N.-brokered negotiations could quickly resolve the standoff.

Last week's violence followed several days of an armed stand-off between Kabila's government and hundreds of Bemba loyalists who defied an order to disarm under a plan to cut his security detail to 12 police officers.

The EU sent a military mission to the country to ensure voting in last year's poll was not disrupted by violence. (Additional reporting by Evelyn Leopold at the United Nations)

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