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UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
January 31, 2003
Posted to the web January 31, 2003
Nairobi
The EU parliament called on Thursday for concrete measures to punish persons found guilty of pillaging the resources of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), including an investigation by the International Criminal Court into "acts of genocide and crimes against humanity committed in Africa and elsewhere, where such acts were perpetrated to illegally secure natural resources, such as conflict diamonds and timber".
The joint resolution was adopted on Thursday by 421 votes in favour, four against and 59 abstentions.
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Noting that access to and control of key mineral resources such as diamonds, copper, cobalt, coltan and gold was one of the main causes of civil war in the DRC, the parliament condemned the illegal exploitation of the DRC's natural resources by its neighbours as well as by private international companies.
It further called for Congolese individuals found to be involved in such activities to be dismissed from their posts and excluded from holding office during the period of a transitional government leading to adoption of a new constitution and the holding of free and fair national elections.
Meanwhile, The New Vision Ugandan government-owned newspaper reported that the Porter Commission - Kampala's independent inquiry into Uganda's alleged involvement in pillage of DRC resources - was due to present its latest report on Friday.
The Ugandan report follows a decision taken by the UN Security Council on 24 January to issue a new six-month mandate for the UN panel of experts investigating the illegal exploitation of natural resources and other forms of wealth in the DRC.
The mandate will afford suspects named in the UN panel's most recent report, released on 21 October 2002, the chance to present their defence pleas by 31 March. The Council requested that the pleas be published as an attachment to the report no later than 15 April.
In the October 2002 report, the experts said that despite the withdrawal of foreign forces from the DRC, "elite criminal networks" had become so deeply entrenched that continued illegal exploitation of the country's natural resources was assured, independent of the physical presence of foreign armies.
The panel reported that the humanitarian consequences of the financially driven conflict had been horrific: in the five eastern provinces of the DRC, the number of excess deaths directly attributable to the Rwandan and Ugandan occupation since the outbreak of war up to September 2002 had been between three million and 3.5 million.
