Planes Leaving Central African Republic With Gold Described to Chile In First CAR Sanctions Meeting of UN Security Council

By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive

UNITED NATIONS, February 6 -- Small planes land in the Central African Republic and take out gold and diamonds, CAR's ambassador told the UN Security Council in a closed-door meeting on February 6. He asked, where do these planes come from? Not from the Central African Republic.

  Like the next speaker, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, he was responding to a statement by Security Council member Chile about the exploitation of natural resources. In the Council's most recent CAR resolution, sanctions are imposed on individuals 

"providing support for armed groups or criminal networks through the illicit exploitation of natural resources, including diamonds and wildlife and wildlife products, in the CAR."

  The CAR sanctions committee chairperson, Lithuania's Raimonda Murmokaite, convened this first meeting and invited neighboring countries to speak. This is not the usual practice: Sudan, for example, is usually confined to hanging about outside their sanctions committee meeting hoping to get briefed by an ally.

(One wonder what Lithuania, as a member of the ACT reform group, thinks of this. Inner City Press on February 5 asked Ambassador Murmokaite as Security Council president for February if she thinks the next Sudan sanctions report will get released, or will other's objections be given more weight than were Rwanda's on the DRC report?)

  But of the Council members' interventions, ranging from Australia about long porous borders to a strangely short and less than memorable contribution from France to the US requesting more specifics on how the resolution's arms embargo is being enforced, it was Chile's on natural resources which drew these two responses. Surprise at this was expressed afterward -- raising the stakes or expectations for Chile's turn as president of the Council.

  Ambassador Murmokaite said she would put a press release about the meeting on the Committee's web site, after a brief silence procedure; she will be briefing the full Council on February 20. But by then, what will be happening in the Central African Republic?

  Will there have been any justice for what High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay says was France putting Muslim communities at risk of attacks by anti-Balaka by first disarming the ex Seleka? For the lynching and corpses desecration committee by CAR Army members yesterday, moments after the new president spoke to them? How will or should sanctions apply to each of these? Watch this site.

   

Mali Coup Reignites UNSC Fight About Libya, Gold Mine Questions UNanswered

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, March 23 -- The coup d'etat in Mali did not come out of nowhere. After the fall of Gaddafi in Libya, arms and fighters flowed back to Mali. Soldiers were being ordered to go north to face the Tuareg without having the right, or even any, weapons.

On March 17 there were protest by young soldiers in Gao Saturday then in Kati near Bamako, about the government's handling of the situation in the south. They mutinied.

On March 21 it was said the UN Security Council would get a briefing under Any Other Business. But it was put back for a day. By the time the Council got briefing on March 22 at 4:30 pm -- several diplomats arrived late, from an Arria formula meeting on Syria -- the coup in Mali was entrenched.

Inner City Press is informed that the briefing, Lynn Pascoe, was pointedly asked about gold mining in Mali, but did not answer. Here are some of the companies involved: Iamgold Corp., Avion Gold Corp., Randgold Resources Ltd. and Cluff Gold PLC.

There are reports that coup leader Amadou Haya Sanogo received US military training. The US has yet to cut off military aid. The International Monetary Fund on March 22 answered Inner City Press' question about Egypt, but not one about Mali, then or since.

A larger issue is that groups previously supported financial by Gaddafi now have empty bank accounts. And so guns are picked back up - and proliferated weapons are there.

The Security Council has long delayed a Presidential Statement about the Sahel. Some, from the West, want to refer to Libya only in terms of humanitarian issues. Others want to tie it to security, now in light of the coup in Mali. A new draft is being circulated with an eye toward adoption Monday or Tuesday unless the silence procedure is broken. Watch this site.

As Congo's Gold Hits 60 Minutes, UN Is Let Off Hook, Wal-Mart's 10% Solution

By Matthew Russell Lee
www.innercitypress.com/congo1gold112909.html

UNITED NATIONS, November 29 -- The Congo's conflict gold was the subject of a fifteen minute feature tonight on the American television program Sixty Minutes. A former rebel said he used collected gold to buy weapons and ammunition from the Congolese army. A woman said she was raped by men in Army uniforms.

Sixty Minutes accepted UN escort and showed a UN camp, but neglected to mention that the UN now provides logistical support to the Congolese army, which beyond weapon sales and rape has been documented for the mass murder of civilians, by the UN's own special rapporteur and experts.

But the UN's top envoy to the Congo Alan Doss has told Inner City Press there is not enough evidence, and has yet to act on Special Rapporteur Philip Alston's report detailing mass rape by Congo's Army. (Click here for coverage of Congo trip by Inner City Press.)

Rather than at least mention this perversion of the UN's peacekeeping mandate, Sixty Minute showed a UN camp to which 13,000 internally displaced people fled. Bags of flour and beans and cooking oil were distributed on the day of filming, for the first time in five months.

Neither Sixty Minutes nor the two non governmental organizations which appeared on screen explained the starvation just outside a UN camp.

The point of the show was that just as conflict diamonds were focused on seven years ago, conflict gold now cries out for action.

Sixty Minutes said without explanation that the UN tries to stem the flow of conflict gold. But if the UN is supporting Army units which rape, kill and sell weapons, and which themselves control mines, how is the UN trying to stop the flow?

Footnote: Back in the U.S., Sixty Minutes quotes Tiffany's as identifying the source of nearly all of its gold -- in Utah -- while Wal-Mart will only say that it will track the source of 10 percent of its gold by next year. If it were rap music with profanity, Wal-Mart would take action. But conflict gold from the Congo? Ten percent sourcing, maybe, by next year...

And see, www.innercitypress.com/congo1gold112909.html