October 23, 2002
The Rwandan government has rejected a UN report accusing it of looting the natural riches of its vast western neighbour Democratic Republic of Congo, saying it was riddled with baseless accusations.
"The report says nothing new and like previous reports simply recycles unsubstantiated allegations and blatant falsehoods," said a statement issued by the office of Rwandan President Paul Kagame received Tuesday evening by AFP.
"The government of the Republic of Rwanda has previously stated and maintains that these politically motivated reports are lacking in facts but abundant in insinuations and accusations, whose negative consequences to regional peace and stability are all too clear," the statement said. In a report to the UN Security Council, an expert panel on Monday accused 54 people, including more than 20 senior military and political officials in DRC, Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe, as leaders of new "elite networks" exploiting the DRC's minerals, timber and wildlife.
"The elite networks maintain the facade of rebel administrations in the occupied areas" to generate and then steal public revenues, it said. "The looting that was previously conducted by the armies themselves has been replaced by organized systems of embezzlement, tax fraud, extortion, the use of stock option as kickbacks and diversion of state funds."
The Rwandan government statement said: "The report attempts to not only criminalize the government and people of Rwanda, but also to intimidate and blackmail them into silence and inaction against the authors of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the ex-FAR and Interahamwe. This is neither acceptable nor justifiable."
Rwanda sent troops into the DRC in August 1998 to back rebels seeking to oust the Kinshasa government and to prevent cross-border attacks by Rwandan Hutu extremists from the Interahamwe and members of the former Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) who had fled to the neighbouring country after the 1994 genocide.
Kigali withdrew the last of some 20,000 troops it had posted in DRC on October 5, in line with a peace pact signed in July between Kagame and DRC President Joseph Kabila. The war in DRC has diminished in intensity since that peace accord and a string of others were signed this year, but criminal gangs and rebel groups linked to the departing armies are profiting from ongoing small-scale conflicts and are unlikely to disarm or disband, the UN report said.
Last week, Kigali said it was prepared to send its troops back into DRC, to defend its border towns from fresh fighting that erupted in the east of the vast central African country as various militias and rebel groups jockeyed to fill the power vacuum created by the Rwandan pull-out.
The statement from Kigali said the UN report was an "...attempt to cover up the failures of the international community to prevent and stop the 1994 genocide whose legacy continues to fuel conflicts in the Great Lakes region."
"The government of the Republic of Rwanda seriously questions the motives and credibility of the authors of the report, whose intentions clearly undermine efforts towards a peaceful settlement of the conflicts in the Great Lakes region."
The UN Security Council is due to meet Thursday to review the report, which Kigali has "rejected in its entirety."
"The government of the Republic of Rwanda will continue to fulfill its obligations to ensure peace and security for her people and will not be derailed from meeting these obligations by the same international community that abandoned Rwanda at her greatest hour of need," the statement by Kagame's office said.
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