| KAMPALA A UNITED Nations Security Council team established to monitor an arms embargo on the DR Congo has accused Uganda of refusing to honour its repeated requests for information on its arms deals.
The requests include allowing the UN team access to the national arms factory at Nakasongola.
The government, has however, said it has nothing to hide and is fully cooperating.
The Group of Experts which was set up in 2004, a year after an arms embargo was slapped on DRC, has now written to Uganda's Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Francis Butagira, requesting among others for a list of all people who travelled to DRC between January and September last year.
Their letter written on March 10 reads in part that, "The Group
has repeatedly requested to visit the Nakasongola weapons factory and to be provided with specific details of the ammunition produced since the arms embargo was adopted. The government continues to refuse these requests." Oswaldo de Rivero, Peru's Permanent Representative to the UN, also chairman of the Group, signed the letter.
The team repeated its request to visit the Nakasongola factory and access its records.
It also demanded "to be provided with end-user certificates, import documents and manufacturers information including all serial numbers of all firearms delivered to Uganda since the imposition of the arms embargo and any firearms delivered from Uganda to the DRC over the same period".
Sources in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the government was considering the request which one diplomat termed "excessive."
The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Julius Onen, who is also Uganda's focal person in
negotiations under the Conference on Peace and Security, says his side has been given 30 days to provide the information requested.
"We have responded before and we are now preparing another response. We availed most of the information they requested before and we do not know why they have not brought it on record for everyone to see" Onen told Daily Monitor by phone last week.
Uganda has nothing to hide," he added.
The UN experts also demand that they be allowed to "visit and inspect relevant documentation at the military airfield in Entebbe (and be provided with) air traffic logbooks for the civil airport in Entebbe".
They also demand to "receive the records, and the amounts and details of merchandise exported to, and imported from the DRC by Uganda" last year.
Ugandan companies have been doing brisk business with the DRC with exports almost doubling between 2004 and 2005. Uganda exported close to $30 million in 2004 but exports surged to $60
million last year according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
This recent letter closely follows a complaint lodged by the Experts with the President of the Security Council, Argentine representative Cesar Mayoral, that "it had addressed requests for information to the governments of Rwanda and Uganda, and more recently to the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to which it had received either no response or incomplete or inaccurate information".
In spite of the rosy outlook for future trade, low intensity conflicts fueled by armed militias especially in eastern DRC, have killed thousands and displaced more.
Uganda hosts the largest number of refugees in the region, dominated by Congolese fleeing armed conflict. However, trafficking in small arms threatens security in north and north eastern Uganda where cattle rustling by armed nomadic tribes is a major cause of instability.
Just six days after it served its letter to Uganda, a
paper written by NGOs noted that the approach to monitoring arms embargoes by the United Nations has been unsuccessful.
In a paper entitled: UN Arms Embargoes; An Overview of the Last 10 Years, three international NGOs, Oxfam, Amnesty International and the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) noted that "In the last 10 years alone, there have been 13 UN arms embargoes in force, yet none has managed to stop the flow of weaponry to countries or armed groups subject to these embargoes"
The UN experts themselves had noted that their attempt to grab embargo busters was complicated by illegal trafficking. " Airports without customs control were still being used at the country's entry and exit points for lack of a well-functioning civil aviation system.
With regard to customs control, the porosity and length of the borders of the DRC with its neighbours, the lack of adequate monitoring of its land and lake borders and the numerous possibilities
for smuggling continued to be aggravating factors in the failure to implement the arms embargo in the DRC.
The relationship between the UN and Uganda has been lukewarm because the government has been critical of efforts by Monuc, the UN peace force in DRC to force out LRA rebels who have moved congregated in Garamba National Park since September 2005.
The allegations of non-cooperation pose a fr esh challenge to regional peace and stability. | 
