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GPF List-Serv
October 4 - 15, 1999
Greetings from the Global Policy Forum!
Our list-serv messages have been delayed for two weeks, due to changes at our internet service provider. The switch is now complete and we will be resuming our weekly messages. We appreciate your many inquiries. We're glad to know that readers missed our regular offerings.
Congratulations are due to Medecins sans Frontieres for their Nobel Peace Prize, announced last week! We have been impressed by the effective and courageous work of this organization. Our congratulations particularly go to our friend Catherine Dumait-Harper, the MsF United Nations Representative, who is greatly respected around Turtle Bay for her dynamism, diplomatic skills and extraordinary knowledge about crises where MsF is operating. Catherine is Vice-Chair of the NGO Working Group on the Security Council. After working with her for the past four years, we can say that she deserves a Nobel in her own right.
The NGO Working Group on the Security Council had a meeting on October 7, with Ambassador Anders Mollander of Sweden, the soft-spoken chairman of the United Nations Expert Panel on Angola Sanctions. Also present at the meeting was Repporteur Stanlake Samkange of Zimbabwe. The Expert Panel, called together by Ambassador Fowler of Canada, Chairman of the Angola Sanctions Committee, is working to gather evidence about diamond smuggling, arms transfers and other ways the Security Council sanctions are being flouted by Jonas Savimbi's UNITA, to continue the brutal civil war in Angola. The panels face a serious challenge, because the civil war is good business to arms merchants, diamond dealers and other business interests. The experts do not expect to be able to cut off the flow of arms and supplies, but to make the process more difficult and expensive, putting pressure on Savimbi to end the conflict.
After the meeting, we reflected on the arms-traficking into Angola and wondered in particular how Savimbi has managed to get delivery of tanks and other heavy armored vehicles by air, into his jungle army headquarters -- supposedly without anyone noticing the delivery route or the identity of the deliverers. To our knowledge, only a very few countries have the capacity to airlift tanks. The huge aircraft and long runways necessary for such an operation scarcely lend themselves to secrecy. A few well-placed sattellite photos would surely reveal quite a lot about this endeavor. But the UN is still in the dark.
One of the most sinister figures said to have direct involvement in the Angola war is US-based diamond dealer Maurice Tempelsman, an old hand in the Africa diamond trade, close friend of Jackie Onassis, and a major player in the Democratic Party. A few months ago, the respected Africa Policy Information Center of Washington DC named Tempelsman as having extensive diamond-mining deals with Savimbi and said he was quietly lobbying in Washington for a pro-Savimbi policy. With all that in mind, we were surprised to find Tempelsman's name on the list of the "Poverty Eradication Committee" of UNDP's new NetAid web site and fund-raising program, organized jointly with computer-maker Cisco Systems. Once again, a UN agency is bringing its work into disrepute due to zealous alliances with shady business interests.
Global Witness, the London-based NGO, has launched a campaign called "Fatal Transactions" to raise awareness about the connection between the diamond trade and arms sales in African countries with punishing civil wars -- not only Angola but also Sierra Leone and Liberia. We welcome this new campaign, that asks consumers buying diamonds to think about the issue and seeks to bring pressure on the DeBeers worldwide diamond cartel to enforce the UN sanctions or face serious consequences. A press release is posted among the offerings below.
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