Kinshasa to open inquiry into UN report on resource pillage

The public prosecutor of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is to open an inquiry into allegations made earlier this week in a UN report on the illegal exploitation of the natural resources of the DRC. "We are going to begin an investigation that could lead to legal action being taken, if possible," Luhonge Kibinda Ngoyi, the DRC public prosecutor, told IRIN on Friday. Kibinda said that he would not automatically accept the UN report as correct, and wanted to make his own inquiries to ensure that justice was served. "This inquiry is aimed at enabling us to verify if what the report said is true," he added. The DRC government spokesman, Kikaya Bin Karubi, said it was necessary to give people cited in the report the opportunity to defend themselves. The UN report accused several DRC government figures of involvement in illegal exploitation, including Minister of National Security Mwenze Kongolo; Director of the National Intelligence Agency Didier Kazadi Nyembwe; Minister of Presidency and Portfolio Augustin Katumba Mwanke; the president of the state diamond company, Societe miniere de Bakwanga (MIBA), Jean-Charles Okoto; Planning Minister and former Deputy Defence Minister Gen Denis Kalume Numbi; the director general of Sengamines, Yumba Monga; and former Minister of the Presidency Pierre Victor Mpoyo. Overall, however, Kikaya said he thought the UN report was quite favourable for the DRC. "This report has enabled the world to understand that Rwanda did not come to the Congo simply for reasons of security, as it has claimed," he said at a news conference on Thursday. "It is in our country primarily to pillage, in collaboration with those responsible for the genocide" of 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and politically moderate ethnic Hutus in Rwanda in 1994. The UN report assigned guilt both to members of the DRC government and its allies - Zimbabwe military figures, in particular - as well as to Uganda and Rwanda, who have backed rebel movements during the past four years of war in the DRC. Rwanda has issued an official denial of any involvement in the illegal exploitation of DRC resources. Uganda and Zimbabwe have yet to issue official replies. The humanitarian consequences of the financially driven conflict had been horrific: in the five eastern provinces of the DRC alone, the number of excess deaths directly attributable to the Rwandan and Ugandan occupation since the outbreak of war up to September 2002 was estimated to be between three million and 3.5 million people, the panel said.