KINSHASA, Congo - The United Nations reported an upsurge of rapes, killings and torture by Congo's security forces and warned that U.N. peacekeepers overseeing the postwar transition in the country could end their cooperation with the police and army.

Congolese troops and police committed some 1,200 of the 1,866 rapes investigated by the United Nations between April and December, the U.N. said in a report released Wednesday. Some 800 rapes were blamed on security forces during the same period in 2004, while the overall number of investigated cases was about the same.

With killings and torture also on the increase, U.N. commanders are debating whether their 17,000 troops should continue to cooperate with the local security forces, the report said.

U.N. peacekeepers are running joint operations with Congo's army, trying to calm the vast nation ahead of elections scheduled for July — the first in 40 years.

"It is a big debate. Should we stop joint military operations with the Congolese army for good or should we continue, and under what conditions?" said Sonia Bakar, a U.N. human rights official who helped write the report on abuses.

The Congolese army acknowledges its troops commit human rights violations, including torching villagers' homes, as they hunt for militiamen who hide among civilians, but a spokesman said Wednesday that offenders are disciplined.

"We have proper disciplinary and judiciary measures in place for those who commit crimes against civilians, and our complaints are properly investigated," said Delion Kimbu, spokesman for the Ministry of Defense. "There are problems with every army, and ours is no different."

Bakar said that while large-scale massacres have decreased, "the numbers of individual cases of torture and executions have sharply increased."

"Unfortunately, human rights violations by the Congolese army continue today and they largely go unpunished," she said. Further details on alleged abuses weren't immediately available.

"The routine use of physical violence against civilians by members of the security forces was observed everywhere the army or police had been deployed ... often motivated by the desire to obtain money, goods or minerals from civilians," said the report.

Human rights investigators are receiving "great numbers of reports of rapes and sexual violence against women and young girls, largely committed by the army and police," the report said.

Congo has been wracked since its 1960 independence by coups, army mutinies, corrupt rule and wars, with the latest conflict officially ending in 2002. The elections, the first since 1965, are meant to select a democratic government to replace a transitional administration led by President Joseph Kabila.

Congo's army melds different armed elements that often battled during the war, which saw widespread abuse of civilians and left the country in tatters. Many of the fighters that preyed on Congo's people during the war are now part of the army. Policemen are also poorly trained and paid a pittance.