Ireland's Ambassador to the United Nations, Mr Richard Ryan, will make a three-week fact-finding visit to Angola and neighbouring countries next month, on behalf of the Security Council, to assess the impact of UN sanctions on the country's 30-year internal conflict.
Following Ireland's accession to the Security Council for a two-year term last month, Mr Ryan was appointed chairman of the committee to oversee the implementation of sanctions against the Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). Under the leadership of Dr Jonas Savimbi, UNITA has been waging civil war against the elected government led by the MPLA (People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola).
An estimated one million people have died in civil strife, which began even before the country secured its independence from Portugal in 1975. The sanctions regime was instituted to stop UNITA from trading diamonds for arms.
However, the violence continues and last week five civilians were reported killed when rebels captured the small town of Galangue in southern Angola.
Speaking at a five-hour Security Council meeting on the issue, Mr Ryan pointed out that recent UN reports had "directed a sharp, investigative beam into hitherto largely uninspected but highly organised and active networks, driven for the most part by state, commercial or personal greed for profit, regardless of the cost in human lives and misery".
He believed it was now "much more difficult and more expensive for UNITA to conduct business with the suppliers of essential materials". As chairman of the sanctions committee, he would work "in a positive, forward-looking manner to convince all concerned that they can and must end their assistance to UNITA - assistance which is in defiance of the will of the international community".
A UN monitoring panel reported in December that UNITA continued to mine and market diamonds despite the sanctions regime. The report accused arms dealers in Burkina Faso, Bulgaria and the Ukraine of supplying weapons to UNITA, in breach of the sanctions. The panel recommended that the council consider implementing a "certificate of origin" regime for diamonds to discourage illegal transactions. The Swedish ambassador to the UN, Mr Pierre Schori, whose country currently holds the EU presidency, told the Security Council that this proposal should be given urgent attention.
The UN monitoring panel had also recommended that the Security Council consider applying secondary sanctions against any government found to be intentionally violating the sanctions. Singapore argued strongly at the meeting that "if sanctions busters continue to be `rewarded' and not punished . . . the damage will not be limited to exploitation of the resources of Angola but will undermine the credibility of the UN itself".
Portugal urged unspecified "improved" implementation of the UNITA sanctions.