UN drops Rwanda arms export notice

United Nations, March 29: The UN Security Council abolished requirement for countries to notify it of all arms exports to Rwanda after the African nation said the provision hurt its ability to equip peacekeepers.

A Security Council committee set up to oversee the Rwanda arms embargo said in 1996 that it no longer needed to be notified of arms exports, but the requirement was still contained in a resolution and had led to ambiguity.

A new Security Council resolution yesterday terminated the notification provision effective immediately.

The resolution also stressed ''the need for states in the region to ensure that arms and related material delivered to them are not diverted to or used by illegal armed groups.'' Rwanda had accused the Democratic Republic of Congo of supporting Rwandan Hutu rebels in eastern Congo, and in turn Rwanda was accused of arming anti-government militia in the Congo.

Global rights groups said in October that despite a UN arms embargo on Congo since 2003, rebels in the Northeast were found to have arms and munitions from Russia, China, Greece, Serbia, South Africa and the United States.

In a letter to the Security Council earlier this month, Rwanda's UN envoy Joseph Nsengimana said Kigali believed there were politically motivated attempts to revive the arms export notification requirement, but he did not elaborate.

''I am sure there will be little doubt these requirements would impede efforts to ensure that our personnel serving under United Nations and African Union mandates continue to be well equipped for peacekeeping duties,'' he said.

Rwanda currently has police, troops or military observers in UN peacekeeping missions in Haiti, Liberia, Sudan and the Ivory Coast and African Union missions in Sudan's Darfur region and the Comoros. Diplomats say Kigali also has hundreds more troops ready to send to Darfur.

A UN arms embargo imposed on Rwanda in May 1994 after soldiers of the former Rwandan army and Hutu militia began slaughtering Tutsis was suspended for the country's government for one year in 1995 and then lifted in 1996. It is still in place for militias.

Reuters