TANZANIA has asked parties involved in concocting a report which claims this country is arming the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (known by its French acronym as FDLR), believed to be operating in parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), to apologize forthwith for telling this big lie.
In a strongly worded denial of arming Hutu rebels terrorizing parts of Eastern DRC, the Tanzania Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation Bernard Membe has told reporters that parties who are the sources of this lie should apologize to Tanzania because this country would never arm any group to terrorize good neighbours such as Rwanda and the DRC.
According to reports from United Nations headquarters in New York, the alleged findings which expose Tanzania as arming the FDLR were made by five experts working under the auspices of the UN. The experts come from Belgium, Guinea, United States of America, Italy and the UK.
Their highly-controversial United Nations report claims that Tanzania has been secretly sending weapons to a Hutu rebel group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). According to the UN document, Tanzania is among 25 countries that form an international support network for the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (known by its French acronym FDLR).
The FDLR is made up of Hutu refugees from Rwanda who took cover in the DRC after the end of Rwanda's 1994 genocide of over half a million Tutsis. The team is said to have found out that Rwandan Hutu rebels who ran away from their motherland, regrouped in the foreign land and were now terrorizing Rwandan Tutsi and other tribes in the DRC.
The false report has been running in the international news media during the last 72 hours. But Membe says the report is nothing but a calculated plan to damage the good name that Tanzania and its government has for the good job it has done to help neighbours for all these years.
The Tanzanian foreign minister is accompanying President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete in Port O Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, to attend the Commonwealth Head of States summit.
In an earlier reaction, The Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Ambassador Seif Ali Iddi, had categorically denied the allegations in a telephone interview with THISDAY.
“Tanzania has never supported rebels...and it will never support rebels,” he declared.
The deputy minister acknowledged that the government had received official communication from the UN regarding some local telephone numbers said to have been called by the rebels to unspecified contacts in Tanzania.
“We are still following this up. We are using our own sources to trace those numbers,” he said.
The UN report claims that the phone calls were made between FDLR commanders and high-level government officials in Tanzania and Burundi, two countries on the eastern DRC border.
Deputy minister Iddi said a considerable amount of time has already passed since the government were notified of the telephone numbers, and efforts are still underway to locate the owners.
“That has not been easy, taking into consideration that the process of registering SIM cards had not been introduced by the time we were notified by the UN about this matter,” he said.
He, however, asserted that the telephone number bearers, whoever they were, must have been acting in their individual capacities, and the government as an institution was not responsible in any way.
According to the UN report, about 25 countries – also including the United States and some in Europe - are part of an international network helping DRC rebels to buy arms and transfer money.
It specifically accuses Tanzania of making “significant deliveries” of weapons and ammunition via Lake Tanganyika to the FDLR, and says Tanzanians are motivated by the need to retain influence over illegal trade with the Congo.
The findings were slated to be discussed by the UN Security Council in New York last Wednesday, and are seen as a scathing indictment of how little the international community has done to cut off logistical support to the FDLR.
Contacted for comment on these UN findings on Thursday, the Minister for Defence and National Service, Dr Hussein Mwinyi, said he personally has not seen or heard of the report.
The report says supporters in North America, Europe and Africa have become the backbone of the FDLR's day-to-day operations, including formulation of its military strategy.
Though the UN Security Council met in a closed-door session on Wednesday for a briefing on Congo by its sanctions committee, the report was not discussed, and UN associate spokesman Farhan Haq later said it is now likely to be brought up on Monday next week.
Other officials have said the report is being treated with kid gloves because it includes evidence of material support to the rebel group by UN security council member states.
The report says the rebel group continues to control lucrative gold mines in eastern Congo, allowing it to traffic millions of dollars in minerals through the country's porous borders.
UN investigators analyzed telephone logs of senior militia commanders, showing regular contact with individuals, charity groups and government officials in at least 25 countries, including Tanzania.
While previous reports have indicated that the rebel group's main source of funding is its control of Congo's mineral riches, the UN report argues that the FDLR's international network living abroad is a critical source of support.
The report says investigators found 21 phone numbers in France that had been in regular contact with FDLR military satellite phones over the past year.
France, the report says, did not respond to the UN's frequent requests for details on these numbers.
French officials could not be immediately reached for comment on Wednesday.
In the United States, a New Jersey-based supporter has been making Western Union money transfers to a Congo-based liaison officer of RUD, a splinter group allied with the FDLR. The UN also traced contacts and money transfers to Catholic charities in Spain.
The report claims that FDLR rebels have been able to use vast international networks in Tanzania and elsewhere to bolster their supply of arms and recruit extra soldiers.
According to UN military experts, FDLR controls gold and tin mining areas with about 6,000 to 8,000 fighters, while the Tutsi-led group CNDP operates as a parallel militia of 6,000 men.
The UN report also alleges that Burundi and Tanzania are supplying arms to FDLR under a high-level contract between the rebels and the Tanzanian government.
It further claims that both Tanzania and Burundi serve as conduits for the FDLR to traffic gold to the United Arab Emirates
Source:thisday.co.tz/
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