Nations helping illegal trade
2006-02-16 09:31
New York - United Nations security council members pressed Uganda and Rwanda on Wednesday to co-operate with UN experts seeking to end the illegal trade in minerals plundered from neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.
United States ambassador John Bolton said that council members "were disturbed that many countries were still not fully co-operating with the experts".
Bolton said: "We think that co-operation is critical. We urge the experts and others to do what they can to get co-operation to acceptable levels."
Bolton named no names, but the experts, in a January 27 report, had accused Uganda and Rwanda of refusing to provide them with straight answers about their role in the exploitation of Congo's mineral resources.
Transport networks 'under state control'
Three years after a peace agreement ended Congo's five-year civil war, which drew in most of the vast central African nation's neighbours, some of those neighbours were still believed to play active roles in the illegal export of its resources including gold, diamonds, medicinal barks, cobalt and copper.
The report said that until Congo's industry, mining and transport networks were brought firmly under state control, "it will be impossible to ensure peace and security" in the country.
The experts said that Uganda was suspected of facilitating the illegal export of Congolese gold, while Rwanda was believed to be helping smuggle out tin ore.
They said that both countries provided erroneous and unreliable information.
According to the experts, their responses were "not only erroneous but lack basic logic that can't be solely attributed to a lack of capacity".
They said: "A few hours of work by Ugandan and Rwandan officials, for example through the collection of data from the relevant companies involved, would immediately reveal the inconsistencies in the information supplied thus far to the group."