Investigator says he has no axe to grind with Talisman - Globe & Mail, Nov.19
Envoy to Sudan vows fact-finding won't be a 'snowjob'
Investigator appointed to look into human rights abuses and slavery says he has no axe to grind with Talisman
PAUL KNOX
The Globe and Mail
Friday, November 19, 1999
Canada's human-rights envoy to Sudan has a message for anyone
tempted to airbrush reality in the war-ravaged African country: Don't.
John Harker, who is heading a mission to investigate human-rights
abuses in Sudan, vowed he will not be fooled by attempts to clean up the
sites of reported mass expulsions or atrocities near a controversial oil
field.
Instead, Mr. Harker said he will strive to talk to victims allegedly cleared
out of the area where a consortium -- which includes Calgary-based
Talisman Energy Inc. and the Sudanese military government -- is
pumping oil.
"If they've trucked in a few smiling natives . . . the damage to their
credibility would be very, very marked," Mr. Harker said yesterday
before catching a flight to Europe on the first leg of his investigation.
But Mr. Harker, appointed last month by Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd
Axworthy, said he has no axe to grind with Talisman, which bought a
25-per-cent share in the Greater Nile oil project last year.
In a telephone interview from Ottawa, he suggested it would be unlikely
he would make a clear recommendation that Talisman should pull out of
Sudan.
"If that's how I come to feel, the body of my report will reflect that," he
said. "Whether I will use that language is a different matter.
"I'm not part of an agenda to damage Talisman, or part of a snow job
or coverup."
Mr. Harker said he has no reason to believe the company is directly
linked to the resurgence of slavery in Sudan.
He also said he wants to thoroughly investigate accounts of Sudanese
army raids near the oil fields in which entire villages were burned to the
ground.
A United Nations report issued last month quoted witnesses as saying
thousands of civilians were killed or displaced in army sweeps through
the region in May.
But UN investigator Leonardo Franco did not travel to the oil zone, Mr.
Harker said.
"I'd like to go and have a look. . . .," he said. "There will be people who
have pretty good connections. I want to be able to speak to the people
who have been moved, who know people who have been burned out."
Whatever his conclusions, he said, his report will be available to anyone
who wants to read it.
"It should be public, and if it deserves to be trashed it will. . . . On this
kind of thing openness is everything," he said.
Mr. Harker, 55 and a native of England, has advised Mr. Axworthy on
several African countries, including Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
He has also worked for the International Labour Organization and the
South African government. A stint at the Canadian Labour Congress led
some commentators to suggest Mr. Harker might be biased against
Talisman, but the company has welcomed his appointment.
Mr. Harker said he is a director of two private companies and is a
consultant to another. "I'm not inimical to the private sector," he said.
For most of the past 40 years the Sudanese government, dominated by
Arab Muslims from the north, has been fighting secessionist rebels based
in the largely Christian south.
Since a 1989 coup d'etat that brought President Omar Bashir to power,
raids on southern tribes have increased. Women and children are often
abducted and human-rights and church groups say many are sold in
government-sanctioned slave markets.
The groups also say the government is using revenue from the oil project
to buy weapons for the war against the rebels.
The government holds a 5-per-cent share in the project. Other partners
are the state oil companies of China and Malaysia.
Talisman president Jim Buckee says he has been assured that a
percentage of oil revenue will be used to help development in the the
impoverished south.
Mr. Harker was to arrive today in Geneva, where he planned to meet
investigators who worked on Mr. Franco's report.
He will return to Ottawa after meeting a Finnish foreign ministry official
who headed a European Union mission to Sudan.
Mr. Harker said he then hopes to spend at least three weeks in Sudan
and to finish his report by the end of the year.
He said Sudanese authorities told Mr. Axworthy that Mr. Harker would
be free to travel wherever he wants. He said he would accept rides on
government aircraft to major cities, but wants to travel independently in
the countryside.
Canadian diplomats will accompany him. "We'll make our own local
arrangements and see who we can make contact with."
When Mr. Harker's appointment was announced on Oct. 26, Mr.
Axworthy said Canadians want assurances that the operations of
Canadian enterprises are not worsening the conflict or the human-rights
situation for the Sudanese people. The government also announced new
Canadian support for peace talks between the government and rebels.
Only three days earlier, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who
was in Africa, said she was disturbed by the oil project. "I am definitely
going to talk to the Canadians about this," she said.
Many concluded that Mr. Harker was named under U.S. pressure. But
he said Mr. Axworthy first discussed Sudan with him in mid-August. He
said he was asked on Oct. 6 to head the investigation. |
