KINSHASA: Indian UN peacekeepers have been accused of gold trafficking with Rwandan Hutu rebels in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, according to UN documents and witnesses.

The UN soldiers serving in DR Congo exchanged food and information for gold and dollars for some months in 2005 and 2006, several officials from the UN mission there (MONUC) said.

The exchange took place with rebels of the chiefly Hutu Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), they said.

The Indian MONUC troops in Nord-Kivu province were based at Nyabiondo, 80 kilometres northwest of the provincial capital, Goma.

Spokesman Kemal Saiki said on Thursday that the UN’s internal investigation department, based in Nairobi, had opened an inquiry as soon as the mission had been made aware of allegations concerning gold trafficking.

But he was unable to say when the investigation had begun or what period it covered. The UN also said it was rushing an audit team to the DRC this weekend to probe the allegations.

The team will work with all levels of MONUC to get a full picture of the various allegations and will `evaluate management processes related to the maintenance of good order and discipline in the mission’, a UN statement said.

It will then make recommendations to UN headquarters on how to strengthen management on the issue.

In a confidential note dated July 2006 to one of MONUC's top officials, a mission official recommended that a senior Indian officer be immediately sent back to New Delhi.

“Serious allegations have been made” against the officer, “to the effect that he and other Indian officers acting under his instructions have been trading in gold,” the note stated.

It said that “some North Kivu Brigade have sold their rations, reportedly for gold”, adding that “the rations have come on sale in the market at Nyabiondo”.

A spokesman for the Indian defence ministry declined to comment on the charges, but a top army official in New Delhi said `the military establishment is checking the veracity of the charges with the concerned authorities in the UN’. —AFP