Cocoa and diamonds fund military spending

War-divided Cote d’Ivoire’s wealth of natural resources are being used to fund military activities, according to a report by a UN team of experts. It rests with the Security Council to decide whether the experts’ findings, made public late Wednesday, contravene a year-old arms embargo. Cote d’Ivoire is the world’s largest producer of cocoa and the government, which still controls most of the cocoa producing areas since a 2002 rebellion divided the country in two, could be using cocoa cash to buy banned weapons. “Cocoa plays an important role in providing funds for the off-budget and extrabudgetary military procurement efforts of the Government,” the report states. While on the north side of the divide, New Forces rebels were reluctant to allow the experts access to diamond mines under their control and failed to provide a weapons inventory as demanded by the UN in November. “The Group believes that revenue from this illegal diamond production provides an important income for the New Forces…where this income then goes is unclear,” said the report. The experts called for the Ivorian government to conduct an audit of cocoa production by May -- the EU and World Bank have made previous and fruitless calls for the government to carry out such an audit -- and for rebels to urgently provide their long-promised weapons inventory. Cote d’Ivoire was placed under a UN arms embargo in November 2004, immediately following a government airborne attack on rebel positions and a French military base that shattered the terms of a ceasefire agreed as part of a January 2003 peace deal. But the wording of the UN resolution that put the embargo in place leaves many grey areas, said the experts. And it rests with the Security Council to decide whether government attempts to rebuild its air force that was decimated by a French retaliation attack, breaks the embargo. Since November 2004, the Cote d’Ivoire government “has sought to repair, maintain and rebuild” the air force with technicians from Belarus and Ukraine “as a political statement that air power provides the government with a military advantage the New Forces do not have,” the reports says. The report also indicated that the government could be prepared to violate UN restrictions and launch another air attack if it felt its territories were under threat. Inspections of Cote d’Ivoire seaports, airports and land borders did not uncover any evidence of violation of the arms embargo, but according to the report, the Ivorian government stocked up on arms and munitions before the UN embargo was put in place. “Since the imposition of a Security Council measure on Cote d’Ivoire the Government has restrained procurement of weapons and munitions, this is due to an intensive procurement programme prior to the embargo and limited use of arms and ammunition during the short period of intensive armed conflict in 2004,” said the report. While the rebels “captured large amounts of arms” in September 2002, the New Forces and the government alike both want to bolster their “training, maintenance and transportation” capacities, said the report.