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| Africa: Central |
| Congo Flips the Bird to the Security Council. |
| 2003-12-20 |
| EFL from The Guardian via World Wire The government has been accused of snubbing the UN by refusing to act promptly on its recommendation to investigate companies accused of breaching business guidelines during the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A panel of experts set up by the UN security council in June 2000 to report on how the warring factions were plundering gold, diamonds and the metallic ore coltan to fund the conflict asked Britain in its final report in October to investigate whether four British companies were complying with internationally agreed rules for multinationals. They were the cargo operators Avient Air and Das Air, De Beers, and Oryx Natural Resources. All deny breaking the rules. The 34 signatories to the guidelines drafted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have each set up a national contact point (NCP) to mediate between the complainant and the company. Britain’s is a Department of Trade and Industry official, Duncan Lawson. Because the panel was disbanded on October 31, British ministers have decided that no formal complainant exists and that nothing more can be done. This was explained in a parliamentary answer last month by the DTI minister Stephen Timms . He said: "The evidence that has been supplied to the NCP by the UN panel, after several requests by [the government], is general in content and relates only to some of the named companies. "DTI will therefore have difficulty progressing these cases, under the guidelines, on the basis of what has been provided so far." But a security council statement of November 19 urged all states to act on the panel’s findings and conduct their own inquiries. The panel’s chairman, Mahmoud Kassem, said in Cairo that its approach had been agreed in April when members met representatives of the participating countries in Paris. "We explained to them what we were doing," he said. Britain’s response has stunned environmental groups monitoring OECD work. Patricia Feeney, of Responsibility and Accountability in Development, said: "Public confidence in the effectiveness of the OECD guidelines is being damaged by the spectacle of NCPs hiding behind the smokescreen of technical difficulties to justify inaction." A demonstration of soft power with no hard power to back it up. |
| Posted by:Super Hose |