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Gold/Mining/Energy : TLM.TSE Talisman Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tomas who wrote (580)	11/19/1999 7:43:00 AM
From: Tomas	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1713

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.