Congo Gov't Must Bring Order to Mines

KINSHASA, Congo -- The biggest challenge facing Congo's first elected government in nearly 50 years is bringing order to a chaotic mining sector whose riches provoked a regional war that killed millions .

The task could mean redrawing contracts with foreign investors worth billions.

Congo's vast mineral resources are worth an estimated US$300 billion over the next 25 years. In the past, though, the earthly riches have only contributed to misery. Today, most of Congo's 58 million people are mired in poverty.

Endemic graft is the major impediment to development, according to Babacar Cisse, head of the U.N. Development Program in Congo. "Our major concern as a partner is how they can come up with policies that will fight corruption in this country _ it's the whole system that needs to be cleaned up," he said.

"We are agreed that they will have to review all the contracts," he said, "but it's not easy and there's a lot of pressure coming from some (country) partners."

Many question whether a new government expected to include players accused of participating in the plunder has the will to reform, and whether the international community that long has condemned mining practices in the Central African nation can help.

A parliamentary commission report denounces contracts signed under presidential decree by incumbent President Joseph Kabila, who is expected to be announced the winner of Oct. 30 runoff elections. Results are expected by Nov. 19.

"It is hard to imagine that anybody that has to report to a Kabila government will have the ability to order the cancellation of contracts that Kabila and his entourage have authorized and benefit from," said Patricia Feeney, executive director of RAID, the independent London-based organization Rights and Accountability in Development.

The World Bank fears that renegotiating contracts would undermine investor confidence, she said, while Belgium's government warned recently of the need to avoid "a witch hunt" against mining companies.

Nothing has been done to act on a U.N. report that in 2002 recommended the U.N. Security Council place financial restrictions on 29 mining and airline companies working Congo. The companies were based in Belgium, the British Virgin Islands, Congo, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Uganda, and South Africa. The U.N. report also named 54 people _ including international business executives, military and government officials _ and recommended the seizure of their personal assets along with travel bans.

That report called for a review of all contracts and mining concessions made during back-to-back wars from 1997 to 2001.

Congo's riches include cobalt, copper, diamonds, gold, silver, tin and coltan, an essential ingredient of cell phones, as well as coffee, rubber and palm oil. Such resources were looted first by Belgian colonizers and then by dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, whose 32-year dictatorship ended in 1997 when Rwandan troops helped propel rebel leader Laurent Kabila, the current president's father, to power.