The panel of experts' final report in October 2003 said that no further investigation was required into the activities of Cabot, Eagle Wings, and the OM Group, who had protested their appearance on the list of eighty-five corporations. However, the report clearly stated that the resolution of this issue should not be interpreted as absolution. The panel's earlier findings about the contribution that these corporations had made to violence in Congo stood.

Because of the inaction of the American government regarding the behavior of the corporations involved, FOE and the U.K.-based group Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID) filed a complaint with the U.S. State Department on August 4, 2004 against Cabot, Eagle Wings Resources, International, and OM Group, Inc. According to Colleen Freeman, who works with RAID, Wesley S. Scholz, from the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs in the U.S. State Department, declined to investigate the companies further, citing the Panel's conclusion that the issues involving the U.S. companies were resolved. However, in January 2005 he notified the three companies that FOE and RAID still had issues they wished to discuss and offered to facilitate an informal dialogue between the two organizations and the corporations. When RAID contacted Scholz in September 2005 to follow up, he said that the companies had confirmed receiving his letter, but did not respond.

By failing to act, the U.S. and other Western governments have sent a troubling message: Corporations are not responsible for ensuring that their purchase of natural resources does not finance weapons and human rights abuses in the Two-Thirds world. There is a thin but clear link between money that flows to the militias from corporations interested in protecting their claim to the Congo's resources, and the militias' ability to recruit new soldiers and to continue attacking villagers. Unless the corporate plunder of the Congo is stopped, the terror‹and the rapes‹will continue. What We Can Do

f you look at the oil map (previous post above) and see Block 6, the Chinese concession: it looks like it extends into South Darfur. Will the Chinese troops be within South Darfur?

What a coincidence that Sudan - the largest country in the African continent - with land as far as the eye can see without a twig in sight - is having a whole load of trouble and 4,000 Chinese troops concentrated within one area involving Block 6 on the map of South Darfur (the same area I refer to above re Uranium discovery in Hofrat Al Nihas).

Note the Daily Star report about the 4,000 Chinese troops was not via a top news agency: it was authored by Gerald Butt, Gulf Editor of the Cyprus-based Middle East Economic Survey, who writes a regular economic analysis for The Daily Star. The report says it is from Nicosia in Cyprus (the Turks occupy half of Cyprus). The French are flying their Mirage jets around the Chad border, checking their 200 troops are OK. The West has all sorts of observers, monitors, aid workers, satellite surveillance, intelligence reports.... but why is there no real news out of Darfur? It is a very perplexing and deeply disturbing story. Yesterday, I was shocked to read the following, about the Sudan Peace Act:

Genocide in Sudan 1983 to present (...as of 2004) - excerpt:

"The US government's Sudan Peace Act of October 21, 2002 accused Sudan of genocide for killing more than 2 million civilians in the south during an ongoing civil war since 1983. Organised campaign by Janjaweed militias (nomadic Arab shepherds with the support of Sudanese government and troops) to rid 80 black African tribes from the Darfur region of western Sudan. Mukesh Kapila (United Nations humanitarian coordinator) is quoted as saying: "The vicious war in Darfur has led to violations on a scale comparable in character with Rwanda in 1994. All the warning signs are there."