DRC-UGANDA: Kampala denies arms embargo violation charge in UN report

KAMPALA, 1 Feb 2005 (IRIN) - Uganda's Defence Ministry denied on Tuesday claims in a UN report that it had continued to violate a UN-imposed arms embargo in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Instead, the ministry accused the UN Mission in the DRC, known as MONUC, of failing in its duties.

"The UN should just stop haranguing us for their failures," Maj Shaban Bantariza, army spokesman and an aide to the defence minister, told IRIN. "Whom would we be arming in eastern DRC, for sure? We are one of the best promoters of the DRC's political dispensation, therefore we would be the last people to disturb the nurturing of that political trend in Congo."

The recent report by a panel of experts, appointed by the UN Security Council, listed Uganda as one of the DRC's neighbours continuing to funnel weapons and military support into eastern Congo, despite the arms embargo.

The study claimed that eastern DRC continued to be the pawn of Congo's two neighbours, Uganda and Rwanda, as well as renegade army troops, militia leaders and "shadowy" businessmen, who have all routinely violated the UN arms embargo put in place in 2003.

"Neighbouring states continue to exploit the rationale that they have the right to interfere in the internal affairs of (DRC) to safeguard their own national security interests," the report noted, concluding that the estimated 8,000 Rwandan Hutu militiamen remaining in Congo, known as the Interahamwe, "do not pose a threat to Rwanda".

The UN investigators added: "The internal provisions of weapons, training and military sustenance to local defence forces, proxy forces, foreign armed groups and militias only further aids and abets a vicious cycle [of violence]." The embargo applies to the northeastern district of Ituri and the eastern provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu.

"The UN should just throw out their outfit, called MONUC, from DRC and replace it with another, for being ineffective," Bantariza said. "Their work is to disarm all the militia - they have not done that and instead the UN is blaming the [DRC's] neighbours. MONUC should be withdrawn."

He said Uganda had not armed any group in eastern DRC. "Our defence minister was in Washington just recently with a minister from Kinshasa and Kigali [Rwanda], under the tripartite arrangement we have just [signed] to strengthen the political dispensation in Congo, because we believe that is the only solution to the problems there," Bantariza said. "How could we then turn around and promote lawlessness in Ituri?"

Uganda and Rwanda invaded Congo twice, in 1996 and 1998, to oust rebel groups they believed were threatening their countries, with the support of the Kinshasa government, but the two armies ended up fighting each other in the town of Kisangani when they disagreed over the war plan. Uganda withdrew from Ituri in May 2003, but was accused of arming and training several Congolese militia groups who continued to fight one another.

The UN panel accused Uganda of shipping AK-47 rifles, rocket launchers, mortars and landmines across its border to an Ituri militia group, Forces Armées du Peuple Congolais (FAPC), accused of pillaging, torturing and killing Congolese residents. The report further charged that the militia control key gold fields in northern Ituri, which they use to barter with the Ugandan army.

The experts also stated that Rwanda still maintained a "covert residual presence" in Congo, despite officially withdrawing in 2002. Rwanda has repeatedly denied accusations that it has had troops in the DRC since then, though it threatened in late 2004 to launch attacks on eastern Congo to flush out the Interahamwe and other armed Rwandan dissidents opposed to it.

According to the report, Rwanda was also recruiting Congolese children living in a refugee camp in Rwanda and training them as soldiers. Residents of Kiziba camp said groups of students disappeared into unknown vehicles at dusk, only to be given a gun and sent into the jungles across the border.

Bantariza said Uganda was disturbed that ethnic Congolese Lendus and Hemas were killing each other again, and that MONUC was not doing much about the situation. "They have failed to disarm them, instead they are sun-bathing in Ituri and we keep getting refugees in Uganda. The UN Security Council should just withdraw them."

[ENDS]