Congo destroys 800 000 weapons
2010-03-19 08:15
Brazzaville - Munitions experts working in the Republic of Congo have destroyed more than 878 000 weapons in two and a half years, the British Mines Advisory Group (MAG) organisation announced on Thursday.
Frederic Martin, director of an MAG programme on destroying conventional arms and managing stocks and reserves, presented journalists with a report on the destruction of 878 003 weapons between June 2007 and December 2009.
MAG, a non-governmental organisation founded in 1989, reported that the arms destroyed ranged "from light infantry weapons to artillery and mortars, air-borne bombs, rockets, air-to-air missiles, ground-to-air missiles, anti-personnel mines, and grenades".
The operation covered the two main towns, the capital Brazzaville in the south-east and the oil hub and economic capital of Pointe-Noire in the south-west, as well as five regions of the country.
The programme, which cost $1.8m, was financed by the US State Department.
MAG intends to ask the EU for funds to carry out a similar operation in the southeastern Pool district close to the capital, Plateaux in the centre of the country and Cuvette Ouest in the northwest.
"We count on decontaminating the powder keg zone of the international Maya-Maya airport in Brazzaville," Martin said.
Now at peace, the Congo has in the past decade known a series of civil wars, waged particularly by the militias of political parties, factions in the army, and a rebel movement in the Pool which has now disbanded but still awaits full demobilisation and integration into society.
MAG is based at Manchester in England. It has intervened in more than 35 countries worldwide affected by land mines and the other explosive debris of conflict, to help to contribute towards the consolidation of peace.