Examination of Witness (Numbers 467 -
479)
TUESDAY 6 JULY 1999
MR R FOWLER
Chairman
467. May I welcome you very much, Ambassador
Fowler, to this Committee today to explore this question of "smart"
sanctions, financial sanctions, which we are trying to explore,
to see whether or not this is an effective alternative to full-blooded
economic sanctions which do not seem to have worked terribly well
in the case of Iraq, albeit of course they have been applied for
an unprecedentedly long period. Thank you very much indeed. We
are very much aware of your work in this field with the United
Nations so our discussion this morning is extremely valuable.
May I ask you first of all how successful the target sanctions
in place against UNITA have been in avoiding the humanitarian
impact usually associated with comprehensive economic sanctions?
(Mr Fowler) May I say thank you very much for this
kind invitation to appear before your Committee? It is a pleasure
to be here. I should say at the outset that the UK has been among
the most steadfast supporters of what we are trying to achieve
within the Angola Sanctions Committee of the Security Council.
We very much appreciate that assistance. My answer to your specific
question will appear a little bit odd because the sanctions applied
against UNITA generally have been so unsuccessful that the issue
of collateral damage does not really apply. In addition, I guess
I would note that to some extent the series of sanctions which
began in September 1993 to the present are of the "smarter"
variety. In other words, the sanctions are by no means the sort
of comprehensive total export/import sanctions that you have referred
to elsewhere. These sanctions began with specific focused measures
against war materiel and then they moved up through travel bans
and financial sanctions, particularly focused on the assets of
Savimbi and the leaders of his UNITA movement, moving through
diamonds specifically, the principal source of his revenue, touching
briefly, though not terribly successfully on telecommunications
and basically that is as we took over. You will be aware that
Sanctions Committees of the Security Council are usually chaired
by non-permanent elected members of the Council. Canada were given
the responsibility for what are called Angolan sanctions which
are effectively sanctions against UNITA when we took our seat
in January. These are relatively early days for us. It is only
a two-year term. My colleague David Angel and I visited seven
countries in central and southern Africa in May. This visit we
began this morning is to complement that with a visit to the principal
diamond markets in Europe, to the OAU summit meeting in Algiers,
to eastern Europe and to meet with Interpol in Lille.
Ms Kingham
468. It is very obvious that the sanctions have
not been effective. Do you feel that the sanctions process bears
some responsibility perhaps for the extension of the war in Angola
because it gave an indication that something was happening against
UNITA, when in effect what it acted as was a smoke screen to enable
UNITA to re-arm and extend its activities across the country?
(Mr Fowler) I have certainly heard that accusation
before. It is very hard for me to give you a clear answer. The
reason sanctions have not worked is because the countries applying
the sanctions have not made them work. If that fact gave succour
to UNITA, perhaps the thrust of your question is in part accurate.
It is clear that this is a series of traffic regulations which
are not being enforced and as a result people exceed the speed
limit and park everywhere. There has been no effort to suggest
that any new discipline might be applied. Yes, I would imagine
that has given some comfort to Monsieur Savimbi.
469. You say that is because countries are not
implementing the sanctions. We have actually heard in the Committee
that perhaps the UN Sanctions Committees do not think through
how the sanctions will be implemented, that it is good enough
to sit round as a group of diplomats and come up with a sanction
but the implementation and the monitoring and the reviewing and
ensuring they are effective on the ground as sanctions does not
happen because the UN does not have the structures or the procedures
to go through and ensure that happens. How would you react to
that comment?
(Mr Fowler) I do not want to take too many short cuts
in my answer. Many countries apply the sanctions; some do not.
The non-application of sanctions is clearly of two sorts: one,
countries which decide they need not bother and have been able
to do that with impunity, which is unfortunate. Then there is
a large group of other countries which do apply the sanctions
and might possibly apply further measures to see them more broadly
enforced, including on third countries. That collective will to
go the extra step to close down UNITA's ability to make war has
not been taken and indeed that is the principal thrust of the
report I wrote to the Council a month ago. We offered 14 recommendations
outlining ways in which, pointing to ways in which the Council
could decide to make those sanctions really bite across the board
if it chose to. In terms of a bunch of diplomats sitting around
passing laws they knew nothing about, that is not totally inaccurate.
We all work on the basis of advice and instruction from our governments
and sometimes in our governments there are people who actually
understand what this is all about and then they tell us what we
ought to see included or not. It is certainly true that the United
Nations organisation itself is not well equipped to support us
in our task. The Secretariat is, contrary to popular belief, very
small. It is underfunded, it is stretched in a number of different
directions. One thing I certainly believe as a relatively new
member of the Security Council is that the Council itself is particularly
ill served in terms of what in any other organisation we would
call intelligence available to it. Intelligence is a bad word
at the United Nations so we refer to information. The United Nations
does not have, for obvious reasons, any independent source of
information so the only information it has available is that which
some member states see fit to make available and there is not
an awful lot of that.
470. To what extent has it been possible to
target specific UNITA individuals and their families? What problems
have you encountered in this process?
(Mr Fowler) Bear in mind that there is almost no information
available, there is nobody telling me that Mr Savimbi's brother-in-law
showed up at the Cannes Film Festival. I do not have that kind
of information; I wish I did. There is a huge amount of anecdotal
information relating to all of these sanctions: arms, oil, diamonds,
travel, financial transactions, all that. Some of this anecdotal
information is so overwhelming that despite the lack of specificity,
you have to assume with that much smoke there must be some fire.
There are certainly several countries who have allowed Monsieur
Savimbi and his principal lieutenants and families to visit. Some
of them bother to explain that in terms of maintaining the dialogue.
The African fashion of palaver, of talk, this war has raged on
for 24 years, it is going to rage on for generations more unless
people sit down and talk, therefore we do not agree with this
travel ban and we think it is important to maintain links to Mr
Savimbi and that happens to be illegal in terms of our collective
obligations under what most people call the UN Participation Act.
That said, some countries claim that it is important to maintain
that kind of opening for an eventual discussion of peace. When
I suggested earlier that if we collectively had the will to make
it impossible for Savimbi to wage war, we can do that. In my view
that is probably a more significant issue than all the other things
we were talking about: travel, etcetera. Savimbi has earned between
US$3 and US$4 billion from his diamond marketing over the past
eight years. That buys an awful lot of military equipment. His
part of Angola is landlocked. It is not easy to get 50-tonne tanks
into that part of Angola, yet he does that. We might usefully
concentrate on how he does that.
471. Do you think that the collective will to
impose the specific sanctions against Savimbi and the heads of
his UNITA, would be greater if Savimbi were indicted as a war
criminal because the collective shame of being associated with
him would be greater?
(Mr Fowler) Without prejudice to whether or not he
would be indictable, under such circumstances certainly it would
provide significant focus to a war which is from my perspective
much too easily forgotten. One million people have been killed
in the civil war. One and a half million people are internally
displaced; far more than was the case in Kosovo. Eight hundred
thousand of those have been displaced since last December. The
United Nations humanitarian coordinator has declared a humanitarian
catastrophe. This is an enormously devastating war to the people
of Angola and hugely destabilising to the entire region.
472. What do you think the effects have been
of targeting only one party, UNITA, to the conflict? Do you feel
the Angolan Government implemented the sanctions in place against
UNITA effectively?
(Mr Fowler) Here you are talking to a member of the
Security Council representing a country on the Security Council.
There is no balance or moral equivalence in terms of the actions
which the Council has taken to date. That is the Council recognises
President Dos Santos as the legitimate president of a member state
of the United Nations, Angola, and sees Jonas Savimbi as a rebel
leader seeking to overthrown the legitimate Government of Angola.
Therefore the sanctions taken, despite the very significant speculation
about this in the media, are against the rebel party and in no
way apply to anything done by the Government of Angola. I am sure
you are well aware from history that after an exhaustive negotiation
in Lusaka, an arrangement was made whereby Mr Savimbi and his
movement would be brought peacefully into the political process.
He just did not like the results. When Mr Savimbi found that the
results were not going to be to his advantage, he went back to
the fight. The Council sees it only that way. I suppose I could
speculate to say that I think it is unlikely, given the geopolitical
dynamics within the UN Security Council, that the Council could
see it otherwise.
473. Business also has a large role to play
in implementing sanctions. In the past there has been some criticism
that companies such as De Beers have not implemented sanctions
or sought to skirt around some of the finer points of the sanctions.
I notice in your recent report they appear to be more on board
now with the sanctions process. Have they been on board in the
past? Have other businesses? To what extent? Do you feel the situation
really will change in the future considering that De Beers' central
selling organisation controls something like 70 per cent of the
rough diamond trade. Obviously they are a very important player.
(Mr Fowler) These are key questions and they are early
days for me to offer definitive answers. We have met extensively
with De Beers. I have met with De Beers in the Democratic Republic
of the Congo, in Angola, their representatives in Namibia, in
Botswana and in South Africa. I will be meeting with them later
today here in CSO in London; it is one of the reasons I am here.
We have met with all the senior people—not quite all—the
principal individuals. I shall be meeting all of them today. We
have a very open dialogue with them and I put it to De Beers,
for the reasons you mentioned, that they clearly have an option
of being part of the solution or part of the problem. Their answer
can only be one of those two things. There is no sitting this
one out. The answer which De Beers executives have given me repeatedly
is that will and have applied the law. That is that until diamonds
became specifically subject to United Nations sanctions a year
ago, they were not subject to United Nations sanctions and therefore
there was no constraint on what kind of diamonds were bought and
sold, where, from Angola. Once the UN Security Council passed
resolution 1173, all that changed. The selling of diamonds which
were known to be from UNITA became illegal and De Beers insist
that from that moment they respected that reality and that they
will continue to do so.
474. Diamonds obviously enabled UNITA to continue
its war. You have stated that the UN Sanctions Committee has limited
intelligence gathering of its own. Presumably evidence of sanctions
busting, skirting, whatever, on the part of companies has to come
from external sources.
(Mr Fowler) Correct.
475. If that evidence is forthcoming, how is
it investigated and what sanctions are then applied to companies
which are found to be crossing the line or near to the line?
(Mr Fowler) The principal weapon available to the
Security Council is one of embarrassment. We expect individual
member states to adopt legislation which will give force of law
to their application of sanctions. One of my tasks in my recent
visit to central and southern Africa and on my current visit will
be to remind countries of their obligations under their UN Participation
Act to enact the appropriate legislation to allow them to act
again sanctions busters, be it in the diamonds area or any other
area. I represented Canada on the Rhodesian Sanctions Committee
22 or 23 years ago and I remember well applying such legislation
and putting Canadians in gaol who were busting sanctions against
Rhodesia. That is what each member state ought to be doing.
Ms Kingham: I wish you well.
Mr Robathan
476. Sticking perhaps with other states, you
mentioned that getting 50-tonne tanks into Angola must require
some form of support elsewhere. You have just been round Africa
so would it be fair to say some surrounding states are not implementing
the sanctions? Would you like to say who?
(Mr Fowler) No. I do not want to limit it to surrounding
states. Our belief is, bearing in mind our massive lack of intelligence
and therefore of the facts, that most of the essential war materiel
available to Monsieur Savimbi comes in by air; most of it. Therefore
it goes far beyond surrounding countries. Monsieur Savimbi is
reported to receive between five and seven supply flights each
evening. These are large intercontinental capable aircraft.
477. Could they carry tanks?
(Mr Fowler) Yes; yes, they carry tanks. We get into
a weight/distance/fuel equation and I would presume that they
would not want to carry heavy tanks that far, which then brings
you closer to the region and the presumed complicity of governments
in the region. That of course raises whole issues of air traffic
control interception capability and end-user certificates and
general controls on arms shipments. From the opening questions
of Ms Kingham, part of the problem has been that these sanctions
have not been taken very seriously and therefore there is a culture
of impunity with regard to transgression. We are trying to change
that by publicising individual countries' obligations and encouraging
them to do the necessary to make that enforceable under national
law. I do not have a very clear picture exactly who is doing what
to whom. I have significant speculation. You will be aware that
there is a great, difficult, dangerous climate of suspicion and
accusation and counter-accusation as between Angola and Zambia.
Each has accused the other of all kinds of things and Angola specifically
has suggested that Zambia is a principal sanction buster. Through
the good offices of SADC, the tension has been reduced significantly
and at least the two sides are talking about accusations and getting
as many off the table as they can. There is no doubt there are
African countries which are complicit in getting raw material
to Mr Savimbi. Similarly, there is no doubt that these very sophisticated
weapons are not made in Africa. They are being sent to Africa
from all kinds of points with all kinds of middlemen who may have
nothing to do with the country of origin of the equipment. We
have to cast the net pretty widely if we are going to stop Savimbi
from being able to wage war.
478. You mentioned assistance and pressure.
Is there something the UK or the UN could do to help the developing
countries around Angola through capacity building programmes to
be more effective in maintaining sanctions?
(Mr Fowler) I am sure there is. I am also sure that
it is not for me to say what the UK should be doing. I know that
many countries are providing customs advice, customs training.
A constant theme one hears in southern Africa is that it would
be very useful for the countries surrounding Angola to have better
control over the management of their air space. To do that of
course they would need relatively sophisticated radars and the
command and communications to knit those together into an effective
regional air defence arrangement. I guess I would point out that
if I were representing a country in the region I would think that
was wholly reasonable. On the other hand, simply knowing what
is happening is not the whole story. You have to be able to do
something about it. One of the key challenges we all face is doing
something about it. Those flights I spoke of can clearly be stopped.
If the will is there, why could we not collectively conspire to
put the aircraft in place which would see what was going on and
then the interceptors to stop those supply planes from going in?
479. You talk about cultural impunity and you
talk about trying to embarrass countries. We in this country often—I
have to say it goes far too far in my opinion—rely quite
a lot on public opinion and the media. We will not go down the
road of the media because I see someone from the BBC sitting there.
But, I would think it fair to say that in this country very few
people know much about what is happening in Angola.
(Mr Fowler) Yes, you are right.
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