UNITA rebels constitute "wider Great Lakes problem"

The preliminary findings of a UN expert panel on Angola's UNITA movement said support for the rebels was more on an "individual basis" than on behalf of governments. The team has been touring African countries, including the Great Lakes region, to establish whether UN sanctions against UNITA are being implemented. Ronald Kayanja, the public affairs officer of UNDP in Uganda, which has been coordinating the team's visit to
that country, said the panel was looking into possible violations of the sanctions throughout the region. "It has and will visit many more countries in the region since the war in Angola has, in a way, become related to that in the DRC and is now a wider Great Lakes problem," he told IRIN on Tuesday. Some of the other countries to be visited include the DRC, the Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Botswana, Namibia and Zambia, he
added. "But the team's focus is more on UNITA and the flow of arms to the group and its violations of the UN sanctions and not really on the countries visited," he stressed. The team will later visit big diamond companies in Europe to find out where they obtain their supplies from. The team is due to present its findings to the UN Security Council next month.