ivory-for-arms deal

Wednesday, 23 April 2008 21:37

By Chief Reporter

HARARE - President Robert Mugabe's military junta has illegally sold more than eight tonnes of ivory to China as part payment for a consignment of arms supplies that provoked an international storm this week.
Officials sources said stocks of ivory at the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management were used to pay for weapons aboard the Chinese ship - 'An Yue Jiang' - that has been turned away from Durban waters but was now heading for the port of Luanda in Angola.

The Zimbabwean heard that the cash-strapped military junta had on April 1 flown to China ivory worth US$1 million as part payment for 77 tons of weapons, that have been shipped from Beijing around the same time.
The Geneva-based secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), to which Zimbabwe belongs, had already begun investigating the alleged illicit ivory sale which, if found true, could be a serious breach of CITES rules covering limited ivory trade.
Under CITES rules, elephant herds in Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia are listed on Appendix Two of the convention, which allows only controlled sales of ivory and all of which have to be first sanctioned by the world body.

The weapons consignment, comprising 3 million AK-47 bullets, 1500 rockets and 3500 mortar shells was ordered from Poly Technologies - a Chinese state company. Poly Technologies, under US indictment for weapons smuggling, received payment for the weapons on April 1, the day results of presidential elections confirmed that Mugabe had lost the poll to MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
On Friday, the weapons carrier sailed from Durban harbour with its six container-loads after workers affiliated to SA's Transport Allied Workers Union refused to offload it. It was said to be heading for the port of Luanda in Angola, whose President Eduardo dos Santos is a close ally of Mugabe.

Reports suggested that another consignment with more sophisticated weaponry was set to be flown into Harare next week to avert the controversy sparked by An Yue Jiang.
As if to confirm that Mugabe's junta was broke and was now mortgaging State assets to beef up its armoury, a German state bank, which lent the Zimbabwean state-owned Iron and Steel Company (ZISCO) € 40-million in 2000, has been granted an order by the Durban High Court to impound the ship in lieu of its unpaid loan.
Zambia's president Levy Mwanawasa, who is also SADC chairman, on Monday urged regional states to refuse permission for the ship to dock. Mozambique has already refused permission for the ship to enter its waters.
"I hope this will be the case with all the countries because we don't want a situation which will escalate the (tension) in Zimbabwe more than what it is," Mwanawasa said.

Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs minister Patrick Chinamasa said Zimbabwe had a right to buy arms from any legal source.
"It's our sovereign right to defend ourselves, it's our sovereign right to buy weapons from any legitimate source worldwide and we don't need clearance
from anyone," Chinamasa told a news conference in Harare Monday.
CITES, which has kept Zimbabwe's ivory under constant watch was said to be looking at auditing the stocks following the ivory-for-arms deal.
Zimbabwe last sold its ivory to Japan in 1998 and with the approval of CITES, The Zimbabwean has been told.

"If Zimbabwe has sold any ivory to China or any other country, it would be easy to establish as we know that at the last count, its stock was worth about 18 tonnes," said a source.
A senior official with Traffic, an anti-ivory smuggling group, said: "There are scientific modes of monitoring the growth and mortality rates of elephants and CITES can at any time easily check and verify what stock we should have in our warehouses," he said.
The illegal sale of ivory is due to damage prospects of Zimbabwe's continued ivory trade, which could block inflows of desperately needed forex earnings.