Kigali slams UN panel report

The Rwandan government described on Wednesday the latest UN report on the illegal exploitation of natural resources of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as "poorly researched" and "grossly unprofessional". An official government response to the report released in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, questioned the document's credibility while denying "the deplorable allegations" that any of its institutions or public officers, civilian or military, had in any way exploited the natural resources of the Congo "or benefited from Rwanda's presence in that country". The Rwandan government challenged the authors of the report to give specific information about the identity of the criminal groups that allegedly had links with the Rwandan army; the Rwandan businessmen who had been appointed to replace Congolese as heads of public enterprises; and the Rwandan troops who had stayed in Congo or been integrated into the RCD-Goma forces fighting the Congolese government. The government also asked how the use of Rwandan currency constituted "economic exploitation" whereas the widespread use of the US dollar did not. The report, the government added, gave "a distorted picture" of trade links in the Great Lakes region, failed to differentiate between legal and illegal business activities in the Congo, and ignored various bilateral and multilateral treaties between Rwanda and the Congo. Furthermore, some of the allegations concerning the mistreatment of Rwandan Hutus, such as the abandonment of Hutu members of the Rwandan army in Congo, "can only be intended to incite Hutus to violence against Tutsis", the Rwandan government said. "The government of Rwanda condemns the use of a UN panel or of the UN itself to be a conveyor of incitement to ethnic, racial or religious violence whatever the excuse," it added. It called on the UN Security Council to reject the report in its entirety, and suggested that the acceptance of such a "prejudiced and unprofessional" document could only serve to tarnish the Council's own image.