UNITED Nations Security Council members have refused to delay an expert panel’s report on the exploitation of diamonds, gold and other resources in the Congo until June, insisting it be produced in March.
Diplomats said Ba-N’Daw, the former Ivory Coast minister and senior World Bank official who chairs the five-member expert panel, was criticised at a private briefing for not contacting commercial and research groups rather than just governments, none of whom had cooperated with her panel.
The panel reported last week it was unable to investigate Democratic Republic of Congo’s illegal exploitation of natural resources because of paucity of information available and asked for an extension until June.
”Members of the council noted that the final report should be submitted on schedule in March,” said Council President Kishore Mahbubani of Singapore. Diplomats, however, said the council would permit a follow up report in June, providing the panel justified in March how it would use the time.
Mahbubani said the council was disappointed with responses of governments involved in the Congo conflict to questions asked by the panel and called on them all ”to cooperate fully with the panel in carrying out their investigations.”
The panel, in an interim report, said the major obstacle to their job was a ”paucity of detailed and reliable information, including statistics, as to the nature, extent, location, yield and value of the natural resources.
”Decades of government neglect, mismanagement and corruption, including widespread evasion of taxes and customs duties, not to mention the effects of conflict since 1996, make it almost impossible to establish a precise and impartial factual picture of the country’s natural resource base and exploitation pattern,” the report said.
Congo’s rich resources of rubber, ivory, timber, copper, gold and other rare minerals have drawn foreign armies and prospectors since the brutal era of King Leopold of Belgium – the country’s former colonial power – a century ago.
But recent efforts to crack down on gems which fill the coffers of fighters across the continent have focused particular attention on the damaging role of ”blood diamonds”.
The Congo government has accused Rwandan and Ugandan troops of looting gems, gold, timber and other minerals from areas under control of rebels they support. The two countries have denied the allegations and repeated their position in meetings with panel members during the past three months. – Reuters