(Recasts with possible AU regional summit)

By Yves Boussen

KIBATI, Congo, Oct 31 (Reuters) - France and Britain launched an EU mission to secure peace in eastern Congo on Friday and the United Nations said African Union leaders had suggested calling a regional summit.

The European Union said it might fly in aid to tens of thousands of displaced civilians in North Kivu province, where an offensive by Tutsi rebels has caused chaos and raised fears of a return to all-out war in the border area with Rwanda.

"The situation is catastrophic. There is no other word," International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) spokesman Pierre-Emmanuel Ducruet said in Democratic Republic of Congo's capital Kinshasa.

He said tens of thousands of civilians, many of them starving, exhausted and thirsty, were on the move around the North Kivu provincial capital Goma, at the heart of one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband left on Friday on a mission to Congo and Rwanda, which accuse each other of backing rebel groups involved in the Congo violence.

The European ministers were due to meet the Congolese and Rwandan presidents, Joseph Kabila and Paul Kagame, and also visit Goma.

At talks in Kinshasa and Kigali, EU Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Louis Michel obtained the agreement of Kabila and Kagame to meet to discuss the conflict, Michel's spokesman said. The announcement followed lobbying by European and U.S. envoys.

In New York, a U.N. statement said Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, who is African Union chairman, and AU Commission chief Jean Ping had proposed a regional summit in telephone talks with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Two days ago, Tutsi rebel leader, General Laurent Nkunda, declared a ceasefire after his forces fought to the gates of Goma, forcing back Congo's army and U.N. peacekeepers.

On Friday, taking advantage of the lull in the fighting, civilian refugees streamed out of the city to seek safer zones, food and aid. Humanitarian agencies restarted operations handing out water and food at Kibati, 20 km (12 miles) to the north.

"Since Monday, we've had neither water nor anything to eat. There are groups of people sleeping out in the open ... We've been abandoned and our children have diarrhoea," said Deo Gracias Makombe, a chief from Burumba village.

MILLION DISPLACED

An estimated one million people have been forced from their homes in North Kivu by two years of violence that has persisted despite the end of a 1998-2003 war in the vast, former Belgian colony, which is rich in copper, cobalt, gold and diamonds.

EU diplomats said any European intervention in Congo was more likely to be humanitarian than purely military.

Speaking on France 24 television, EU foreign affairs chief Javier Solana said EU forces would "very probably" secure Goma airport to fly in aid.

"If the airport is open, several European countries are ready to do that. And they have already made commitments from a humanitarian point of view," he said.

The world's largest United Nations peacekeeping force, 17,000-strong, is deployed in Congo, but has been badly stretched by rebel and militia violence on several fronts and was not able to halt Nkunda's rapid advance on Goma.

Nkunda, who says he is fighting to defend the Tutsi minority in Congo's violence-plagued east, abandoned a January peace deal and has called for a neutral mediator to negotiate.

"The ceasefire is fragile ... and will not hold if there isn't progress on other fronts, in particular political and diplomatic," Alan Doss, head of the U.N. Mission in Congo (MONUC), told reporters in Goma.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy reiterated his "full support" for Kabila. Britain's U.N. envoy, Ambassador John Sawers, said Kabila should talk directly with Nkunda.

Aid workers said in overnight violence in Goma on Wednesday retreating government troops had run amok, killing and looting.

"Life in Goma is very hard, so we prefer to go home. There is no food in town, we have had no support," said Bianze Rubuto, who was leaving Goma with his two wives and four children.

Nkunda said he had ordered his fighters to open up "humanitarian corridors" through the rebel lines.

The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said it was checking reports that several camps for displaced people near the rebel-held Rutshuru zone, which normally housed 50,000 civilians, had been forcibly emptied, looted and burned.

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