Uganda has denied statements contained in a report issued on Wednesday by the United Nations Security Council that the east African country had delayed provision of information to officials monitoring arms sanctions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

"We have not delayed anything," Ugandan Foreign Minister Sam Kuteesa was quoted by a report here as saying.

"What we have done is to give them information whenever they ask for it," Kuteesa said.

The main concern of the report by the UN five-member group of experts on the DRC is "weak border controls allow for lucrative alliances between leaders of armed groups and unscrupulous businessmen."

The report said the experts had received a number of allegations of weapons deliveries that they could not independently verify but which remained "suspicious."

It also said there were "significant inconsistencies" in statistics provided by the governments of Rwanda, Uganda as well as the DRC on the production, import and export of precious metals. Kuteesa complained that "whenever we give information they have asked for more."

The report recommended that the UN Security Council sanctions need to be extended. "The arms embargo demands a flexible and permanent mechanism for unambiguous information-sharing and cooperative action between states."

Source: Xinhua