From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Mon Nov 30 2009 - 20:32:12 EST
Tanzania seeks apology over damning UN report
By ThisDay Reporter
30th November 2009
TANZANIA has asked parties involved in concocting a report which claims
this country is arming the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda
(known by its French acronym as FDLR), believed to be operating in parts of
the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), to apologize forthwith for telling
this big lie.
In a strongly worded denial of arming Hutu rebels terrorizing parts of
Eastern DRC, the Tanzania Minister of Foreign Affairs and International
Co-operation Bernard Membe has told reporters that parties who are the
sources of this lie should apologize to Tanzania because this country would
never arm any group to terrorize good neighbours such as Rwanda and the
DRC.
According to reports from United Nations headquarters in New York, the
alleged findings which expose Tanzania as arming the FDLR were made by five
experts working under the auspices of the UN. The experts come from
Belgium, Guinea, United States of America, Italy and the UK.
Their highly-controversial United Nations report claims that Tanzania has
been secretly sending weapons to a Hutu rebel group in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo (DRC). According to the UN document, Tanzania is
among 25 countries that form an international support network for the
Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (known by its French acronym
FDLR).
The FDLR is made up of Hutu refugees from Rwanda who took cover in the DRC
after the end of Rwanda's 1994 genocide of over half a million Tutsis. The
team is said to have found out that Rwandan Hutu rebels who ran away from
their motherland, regrouped in the foreign land and were now terrorizing
Rwandan Tutsi and other tribes in the DRC.
The false report has been running in the international news media during
the last 72 hours. But Membe says the report is nothing but a calculated
plan to damage the good name that Tanzania and its government has for the
good job it has done to help neighbours for all these years.
The Tanzanian foreign minister is accompanying President Jakaya Mrisho
Kikwete in Port O Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, to attend the Commonwealth
Head of States summit.
In an earlier reaction, The Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs and
International Cooperation, Ambassador Seif Ali Iddi, had categorically
denied the allegations in a telephone interview with THISDAY.
“Tanzania has never supported rebels...and it will never support
rebels,” he declared.
The deputy minister acknowledged that the government had received official
communication from the UN regarding some local telephone numbers said to
have been called by the rebels to unspecified contacts in Tanzania.
“We are still following this up. We are using our own sources to trace
those numbers,” he said.
The UN report claims that the phone calls were made between FDLR commanders
and high-level government officials in Tanzania and Burundi, two countries
on the eastern DRC border.
Deputy minister Iddi said a considerable amount of time has already passed
since the government were notified of the telephone numbers, and efforts
are still underway to locate the owners.
“That has not been easy, taking into consideration that the process of
registering SIM cards had not been introduced by the time we were notified
by the UN about this matter,” he said.
He, however, asserted that the telephone number bearers, whoever they were,
must have been acting in their individual capacities, and the government as
an institution was not responsible in any way.
According to the UN report, about 25 countries – also including the
United States and some in Europe - are part of an international network
helping DRC rebels to buy arms and transfer money.
It specifically accuses Tanzania of making “significant deliveries” of
weapons and ammunition via Lake Tanganyika to the FDLR, and says Tanzanians
are motivated by the need to retain influence over illegal trade with the
Congo.
The findings were slated to be discussed by the UN Security Council in New
York last Wednesday, and are seen as a scathing indictment of how little
the international community has done to cut off logistical support to the
FDLR.
Contacted for comment on these UN findings on Thursday, the Minister for
Defence and National Service, Dr Hussein Mwinyi, said he personally has not
seen or heard of the report.
The report says supporters in North America, Europe and Africa have become
the backbone of the FDLR's day-to-day operations, including formulation of
its military strategy.
Though the UN Security Council met in a closed-door session on Wednesday
for a briefing on Congo by its sanctions committee, the report was not
discussed, and UN associate spokesman Farhan Haq later said it is now
likely to be brought up on Monday next week.
Other officials have said the report is being treated with kid gloves
because it includes evidence of material support to the rebel group by UN
security council member states.
The report says the rebel group continues to control lucrative gold mines
in eastern Congo, allowing it to traffic millions of dollars in minerals
through the country's porous borders.
UN investigators analyzed telephone logs of senior militia commanders,
showing regular contact with individuals, charity groups and government
officials in at least 25 countries, including Tanzania.
While previous reports have indicated that the rebel group's main source of
funding is its control of Congo's mineral riches, the UN report argues that
the FDLR's international network living abroad is a critical source of
support.
The report says investigators found 21 phone numbers in France that had
been in regular contact with FDLR military satellite phones over the past
year.
France, the report says, did not respond to the UN's frequent requests for
details on these numbers.
French officials could not be immediately reached for comment on Wednesday.
In the United States, a New Jersey-based supporter has been making Western
Union money transfers to a Congo-based liaison officer of RUD, a splinter
group allied with the FDLR. The UN also traced contacts and money transfers
to Catholic charities in Spain.
The report claims that FDLR rebels have been able to use vast international
networks in Tanzania and elsewhere to bolster their supply of arms and
recruit extra soldiers.
According to UN military experts, FDLR controls gold and tin mining areas
with about 6,000 to 8,000 fighters, while the Tutsi-led group CNDP operates
as a parallel militia of 6,000 men.
The UN report also alleges that Burundi and Tanzania are supplying arms to
FDLR under a high-level contract between the rebels and the Tanzanian
government.
It further claims that both Tanzania and Burundi serve as conduits for the
FDLR to traffic gold to the United Arab Emirates