By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS, April 3 (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council deplored on Tuesday recent deadly fighting in the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo and urged all parties to use talks to resolve differences.

In a statement, the 15-member council expressed grave concern at the loss of lives and regret at the destruction and pillaging during the March 22-25 clashes between government forces and followers of former warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba.

The council added that continuing international support was important in Congo, where a 17,000-strong U.N. mission has helped restore order after a 1998-2003 war that killed an estimated 4 million people, mainly through disease and hunger.

"It recognizes that such support must be based on a shared commitment from the Congolese authorities and all Congolese political actors to national reconciliation and to the strengthening of democratic institutions," said Britain's U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry, the council president for April.

Last month's fighting, which reportedly killed up to 600 people, was the first combat in the capital Kinshasa since elections last year.

Bemba's personal militia defied a government order to disband after the elections -- Congo's first free polls in more than 40 years won by incumbent President Joseph Kabila -- that were meant to bring peace to the central African nation.

The clashes dealt a blow to international hopes for a fast consolidation of democracy in the former Belgian colony.

"We cannot keep silent about what has happened in Kinshasa," France's U.N. Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere told reporters. "Violence cannot be accepted."

Bemba, who wants to travel to Portugal for treatment on a leg fracture, has been holed up in the South African embassy since the fighting, and the Congolese government has ordered his arrest for treason for trying to start an uprising.

"It's important to send a message that we hope that this violence would stop and that the government would get a chance to be strengthened," South Africa's U.N. Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo said. "It's really to help the situation there."

Despite a 2003 peace accord officially ending the war, grave human rights violations remain widespread, particularly in the volatile east, where Congo's army regularly clashes with armed militias.

Humanitarian workers have estimated that more than 1,200 people die a day in Congo from violence, hunger and disease, in what some call the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Congo is as big as Western Europe and control of its huge reserves of copper, cobalt, gold, diamonds and many other minerals was a key factor in the war.

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