Rogue Planet

UN renews arms, travel sanctions against Liberia

BBC Monitoring Africa - Political
Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring

December 21, 2007 Friday

The UN has renewed the arms and travel embargoes imposed against Liberia for another 12 months. The Security Council of the world body unanimously also adopted resolution 1792 on Wednesday [19 December] to extend the mandate of the panel of experts.

The panel is to monitor the sanctions until 20 June 2008 to conduct a follow-up mission to the region to investigate the implementation of the measures. The panel was appointed by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in July [2007] to renew investigations into whether the sanctions against Liberia were being broken.

This followed allegations that detained former President Charles Taylor may still have access to considerable wealth. The experts were invited by Nigeria to visit the country to investigate the allegations but said they
could not confirm this since it had not yet received a report from Nigeria. With regard to the arms embargo, the panel stated that it had not found any evidence of arms flows across Liberia's borders.

However, it expressed concern over the dramatic increase in armed robberies involving firearms.

The panel of experts felt the issue should be looked at by the Security Council committee monitoring the arms embargo imposed on Liberia.

Source: Star Radio, Monrovia, in English 0700 gmt 21 Dec 07

Photos Prove Darfur Arms Embargo Violations, Says Amnesty International

By Joe De Capua
Washingtgon
24 August 2007

Amnesty International has released photographs that it says prove Sudan is violating the UN arms embargo for Darfur. The Khartoum government describes the photos as fake.

Brian Wood is Amnesty’s arms control research manager. From London, he told VOA English to Africa Service reporter Joe De Capua that Sudan is deploying weapons -- in what he calls –“ breathtaking defiance of the UN embargo.”

He says, “The photographs show the military equipment that the government of Sudan has been deploying in the region of Darfur of Sudan. And there are attack helicopters; there are utility helicopters that ferry arms into places where the militia, these janjaweed militia, are based. And there’s a cargo plane. Soldiers are unloading it onto Chinese military trucks. And that plane is run by a company that’s been trafficking in arms to Darfur in the last months.”

Wood says the photos were taken at the El Geneina airport in western Darfur, near the Chad border. He won’t reveal who took the photos or when.

UN extends mandate of group monitoring Somalia arms embargo

Xinhua General News Service
July 23, 2007 Monday 3:05 PM EST

The UN Security Council decided on Monday to extended the mandate of the group it established in 2004 to monitor the arms embargo on that country for an additional six months.

In passing resolution 1766, the 15-member council condemned "flows of weapons and ammunition supplies to and through Somalia in violation of the arms embargo as a serious threat to peace and
stability in Somalia."

The council requested the expert group to continue to investigate, in coordination with relevant international agencies, violations of the weapons ban, means of transport for illicit arms and activities that generate revenues to fund weapons purchases.

It also requested the group to work closely with the council committee on the embargo to develop recommendations for additional measures to improve compliance and to identify ways in which States
in the region could be assisted to facilitate implementation of the sanctions regime.

It stressed the "obligation of all member states to comply fully with the measures imposed by resolution 733" adopted in January 1992, which established the embargo on all delivery of weapons and military
equipment to Somalia.

The arms embargo was imposed on Somalia in 1992, a year after then president Muhammad Siad Barre's regime was toppled. The country has had no functioning national government since then and has been
wracked by factional fighting.

The Somalia Arms Boycott Breaker

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2076015.ece

Jon Swain and Brian Johnson-Thomas

A RUSSIAN businessman has offered to arrange for eight tons of ammunition to be parachuted to a
militant organisation affiliated to Al-Qaeda in Somalia after being approached by a Sunday Times reporter posing as a middleman for the group.

The offer to hire out an aircraft and provide parachutes for the mission to Somalia, which is
under a United Nations arms embargo, demonstrates how easy it is to flout the efforts of western governments to stop illegal arms trafficking.

The journalist, posing as an intermediary for the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), contacted
Alexander Radionov, who had previously come to the attention of the UN and other international
organisations over suspicious arms flights in Africa. In an exchange of telephone calls and faxes the Russian agreed to help in return for a large fee.

The UN had already noted that his airline Pelican Air, based in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, was operating an ageing Antonov 8 freighter that had connections to Viktor Bout, the Russian arms rafficker.

Bout was described by Peter Hain, the former Foreign Office minister, as a “merchant of death” for his role in conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa.