Global Policy Forum

By Farhan Haq

United Nations - Canada's Ambassador to the United Nations, Robert Fowler, urged member states Thursday to consider new steps - including intelligence-sharing among nations and documentation of diamond trading - to tighten sanctions on Angolan rebels. Fowler, who chairs the UN sanctions committee dealing with the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) rebels said that nations must ''give teeth to hitherto-ineffective sanctions.''

The UNITA rebels had been subjected to UN sanctions since 1993, including a ban on arms and petroleum sales, a ban on all diamond exports by UNITA and restrictions on the rebels' overseas funds and travel abroad.

Yet, Fowler argued, UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi was still able to fund an effective fighting force by selling diamonds to sanctions-busters. ''We estimate that (Savimbi) has made between three and four billion dollars from the early 1990s through last year in diamond sales,'' Fowler said. According to some reports, Savimbi may have made even more money from the sales ''by investing (the profits) rather wisely in a bull market,'' he added. By some estimates, UNITA had been able to maintain a fully-equipped fighting force of some 30,000 soldiers, even after several UN-brokered peace accords, six years of arms embargoes and repeated efforts to demilitarise the rebels.

As a result, the rebels repeatedly resumed combat against the Angolan government, in a war that has claimed more than two million lives during the past 20 years and resulted in 1.7 million people currently being homeless.

''UNITA has played a destabilising role in Central and Southern Africa for decades,'' Fowler argued. He told the 15-nation Security Council that the capability of the nations of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to monitor sanctions needed to be strengthened to limit UNITA's fighting abilities. In a report to the Council, Fowler suggested that SADC countries develop ''information-sharing arrangements on sanctions violations'' and also urged Interpol to ''set up an informal working group or task force'' to deal with sanctions-busting in Angola.

The Canadian ambassador visited the Interpol headquarters in Lyons, France, this month, to hold what he said were ''extremely productive'' talks with the agency's officials on ways to police the trafficking of arms and diamonds in UNITA zones. ''The Angolan sanctions have the force of law,'' Fowler noted, adding that Interpol should have a natural interest because ''contravening those sanctions is illegal.''

Some governments, however, were wary that the recommendations to crack down on UNITA's sanctions-busting could represent a dramatic shift in sanctions monitoring in general. Ambassador Danilo Turk of Slovenia said during a Security Council discussion of the recommendations that the effort to tighten the embargoes against UNITA ''should not be seen as a precedent,'' because each sanctions regime is different. Fowler acknowledged, in addition, that UNITA likely would be able to sell diamonds regardless of how sanctions were policed. But he added that more effective monitoring could at least force the rebels to rely on black-market commerce and, more crucially, limit their ability to earn huge diamonds profits and therefore to buy large quantities of weapons.

Amid the new fighting and sanctions-busting, UN officials appeared at a loss for ways to restart Angola's moribund peace process. Since the collapse of the peace process in the past winter, the Angolan government forced the United Nations to wind up its peacekeeping mission. The UN also has been unable to restart talks between Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos and Savimbi.

''One of the difficulties is that there's been no communication between the two sides for more than a year,'' UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said this week. Urging the two sides to hold talks, he added ''You don't need to make peace with your friends, but with your enemies.''

Fowler said that, in order for the sanctions to take hold in Angola, an effective UN presence - including both political and military components - was needed there. Although UN officials were still trying to negotiate with the dos Santos government on maintaining a substantial UN office in Angola, some diplomats believed Angola now had less faith in the world body's ability to broker a lasting peace.