Officials in Uganda and Rwanda on Saturday denied claims by a United Nations report that their countries continue to funnel weapons and military support into eastern Congo despite a current arms embargo. A U.N. Security Council panel of experts said in a report made public this week that the vast, mineral-rich east continues to be the pawn of Congo's two neighbors, as well as renegade army troops, militia leaders and shadowy businessmen who've all routinely violated a U.N. arms embargo put in place in 2003 at the end of Congo's devastating five-year war. «The internal provisions of weapons, training and military sustenance to local defense forces, proxy forces, foreign armed groups and militias only further aids and abets a vicious cycle,» the report said. Rwandan and Ugandan officials dismissed the report as baseless. «It's not true. I don't know why they are making that report,» said Ruth Nankabirwa, Uganda's minister of state for defense. «We don't want to engage in anything in the Congo, that's why we moved out.» Uganda and Rwanda invaded Congo twice, in 1996 and 1998, to oust rebel factions they believed were threatening their countries. Uganda finally withdrew from Ituri in May 2003 after arming and training several militia groups, who continue to fight one another. The arms embargo applies to the districts of Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu, where battle lines were drawn in Congo's 1998-2002 war, which drew in six nations and killed nearly 4 million people, mainly from war-induced starvation and disease. Despite the war's official end, sporadic violence continues to plague the east. The U.N. report said Uganda was still shipping AK-47s, rocket launchers, mortars and land mines across its rugged, mountainous border to an Ituri militia group known for pillaging, torturing and killing area residents. The militia control key gold fields in northern Ituri, which they use to barter with the Ugandan army, the report states. --More 2232 Local Time 1932 GMT
