UN Congo troops traded arms for gold-rights groups

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

UN Congo troops traded arms for gold-rights groups
23 May 2007 18:19:39 GMT
Source: Reuters

By Joe Bavier

KINSHASA, May 23 (Reuters) - U.N. peacekeepers from Pakistan trafficked
arms for gold with a militia in Democratic Republic of Congo, human rights
groups said on Wednesday, adding a U.N. inquiry into the affair was
deliberately slowed.

The United Nations denied any arms were handed over and said an inquiry
under way for more than a year would be completed in three weeks. Pakistan
rejected the accusations as malicious and distorted but said it was
investigating.

The allegations threaten to strike another blow to the image of the 17,000-
member peacekeeping mission in Congo, credited with guiding the vast central
African country to historic polls last year but repeatedly plagued by scandal.

The accusations are from late 2005, when Pakistani peacekeepers were
stationed in the mining town of Mongbwalu in the eastern Ituri district, where
fighting between ethnic militias continued after the official end of a 1998-
2003 war.

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