Global Policy Forum

A coalition of non-governmental organizations Monday called for a temporary embargo on the importation of rare coltan ore from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), contending coltan revenue was helping to finance guerrilla warfare.

"We were indignant over the decision by the UN Security Council to postpone the application of a temporary embargo for six more months," Marc-Olivier Herman, spokesman for the coalition, told a press conference.

A UN panel of experts investigated trade by European companies in DRC coltan, but the Security Council last year declined to take action. "European countries have a special responsibility, they must take emergency initiatives," he said. "Front-line European companies such as Alcatel, Nokia and Siemens must be certain that the coltan arriving from war zones is eliminated from their production lines."

Coltan, short for columbite tantalite, is a dull metallic ore found in commercial quantities in eastern DRC.

It is refined into metallic tantalum, a heat-resistant powder than can hold a high electrical charge and forms a vital component in the micro-circuitry of cell phones, laptop computers, and other small electronic devices.

The market price of coltan has been as high as 400 dollars (418 euro) a kilogram (2.2 pounds) in recent months.

"There is a direct link between the war in the Congo and the coltan trade," said DRC university professor Apollinaire Malu-Malu.

World diamond merchants have already slapped an embargo on unlicensed diamonds from the DRC war zones, and the NGOs want the electronics industry to institute a similar ban, at least for six months, on the import of coltan.

Such an embargo would ban purchase and import of coltan, as well as other valuable natural resources coming from DRC zones controlled by foreign troops, rebel groups or bordering countries involved in DRC's civil war.

The NGOs said they based their call on studies by the London-based International Peace Information Service (IPIS) which "demonstrated that European companies buying coltan from these zones are contributing to the financing of the DRC war."

The IPIS named Belgian companies Cogecom and Sogem, Masingiro GmbH of Germany, Chemie Pharmacie Holland, and the Swiss offshore company, Finmining.

"Some of the companies we investigated have played a major role in the perpetuation of the war by directly collaborating with the guerrillas or the Rwandan allies," said the IPIS report.

The NGO coalition includes groups from France, Britain, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland.