POLITICS: Resources are being Pillaged, Congo tells U.N.

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 15 2001 (IPS) - A senior official from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) Friday accused neighbouring countries – in particular Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi -of pillaging his country’s natural and mineral resources.

Pierre Okongo Lumbi, head of the Commission on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources, said he concurs with recent findings of a U.N. panel that the resources of the DRC – including gold, copper, coltan, diamonds, timber and cobalt – are being ruthlessly exploited by warring parties in the ongoing civil war.

Between 1998 and 2001, more than 1.5 billion dollars worth of resources were exploited by the three neighbouring states, he said. All three have denied the charges.

Lumbi said the four-year-old conflict in the DRC has resulted in three million deaths. Another two million people have been internally displaced and 200,000 refugees have sought haven outside the country.

Yoko Yakembe, a second member of the Commission, added: “We came to New York City to tell the Security Council that the U.N. panel found a direct linkage between the exploitation of resources and the continuation of the war.”

Yakembe said foreign states and business had legitimate interests in the DRC’s natural resource base “but when states, businesses and individuals illegally exploit resources without being invited into the country, it violates the international sovereignty of the DRC and constitutes illegal acts.”

“International law,” he declared, “was being openly violated by member states of the United Nations.”

At a meeting of the Security Council, summoned Friday to discuss the situation in the DRC, Ambassador Jean-David Levitte of France said the plundering, which was previously believed to be a consequence of the conflict, had now become one of its driving forces.

Uganda and Rwanda are backing rebel groups against the DRC government of Joseph Kabila. Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Angola back Kabila. As a result, numerous experts and diplomats now have said, a domestic military conflict has been transformed into a wider regional conflict threatening peace and stability in sub-Saharan Africa.

Yakembe defended the Zimbabwean troops, saying they came into the DRC at the invitation of the Kabila government. There was no comparison between the “acts of pillaging” by Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi and the existing “cooperation” between Zimbabwe and DRC, he said.

DRC Foreign Minister Leonard She Okitundu told the Security Council Friday his government had the right to invite help when it was attacked by outside forces. “The government has the right to self-defence to protect its sovereignty,” he said, in apparent rebuttal to suggestions that for progress to be made toward peace, all foreign parties to the conflict first must withdraw from the DRC.

“The actions of two foreign armies crossing the border and fighting in a third country over resources that did not belong to either was unprecedented,” he asserted.

He further called on the international community to help protect the many animals being “exterminated” as a result of the conflict. Of some 11,000 hippopotami in the DRC, he said, there remain only about 1,000.

Ugandan Foreign Minister James Wapakabulo told the Security Council his government was “legitimately involved” in the DRC conflict and that neither the government nor any of its companies were involved in the illegal exploitation of the DRC’s resources.

He said there were serious problems with the recent U.N. report and that there was no evidence to substantiate the charge that senior Ugandan military officials were part of a larger network involved in the exploitation of DRC resources.

Patrick Mazimhaka, advisor to the President of Rwanda, told the Council that the U.N. panel had failed to establish the supposed links between the exploitation of resources and the Rwandan Patriotic Army.

He endorsed the view that without a resolution to the military conflict in the DRC, there would also be no end to the exploitation of the country’s resources.

In a 38-page report released last month, the U.N. panel said that a country once renowned for its vast natural wealth bas been reduced to one of the world’s poorest and most debt-ridden states.

Laurent-Desire Kabila, Joseph’s father, led the Alliance of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire and seized power in May 1997, ending the kleptocracy of the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.

Civil war began in August 1998 against rebel groups including the Reassemblement Congolais pour la Democratie (RCD) and La Movement pour La Liberation du Congo (MLC).

The U.N. panel blamed the economic plight of the DRC both on the three-year-old civil war and the “systematic exploitation” of the country – both by foreigners and locals – which “continues unabated”.

“These activities involve a large number of state and non-state actors, belonging both to the region and outside, some directly involved in the conflict, others not,” it said.

In July 1999, the parties to the conflict signed the Lusaka cease- fire agreement, which set out a road map for resolving the conflict and the withdrawal of all foreign forces.

But the cease-fire, which had the Security Council’s blessings, has yet to be fully implemented.

In November 1999, the Council set up a peacekeeping force called the U.N. Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) to monitor the cease-fire.