Congo Denies Transferring Oil-Rich Lake Albert Island to Uganda

(Début de texte). - The Democratic Republic of Congo denied it's resolved a disagreement with neighboring Uganda overownership of an oil-rich island on Lake Albert. The island of Rukwanzi is under joint administration untila commission has established the course of the border, Congo's Foreign Ministry spokesman Claude Kamanga said in an interview today in the capital, Kinshasa.

The Kampala-based Daily Monitor, citing Ugandan army spokesman Major Paddy Ankunda, reported on Sept. 10 that the island had been determined as Ugandan territory after a geo-mapping exercise and that Congo had accepted the verdict. ACongolese administrator on the island confirmed the report in aninterview with Bloomberg News.

``We would like to deny this in the most categorical of ways,'' Kamanga said. ``There has been a lot of progress and wewelcome the advances we've made, but the commission's work is not yet finished.''

The central African countries clashed last year in a dispute over their border area, where Heritage Oil Corp. of Canada and U.K.-based Tullow Oil Plc are exploring for oil onthe Ugandan side of the lake. A Heritage Oil worker and three Congolese civilians were killed in the incident. Congo's President Joseph Kabila and his Ugandan counterpart, Yoweri Museveni, last September signed an agreement forming a border commission to establish the ownership of Rukwanzi. In terms of the accord, Congo transferred the islandto joint control until the commission delineated a new border,Kamanga said today. (Fin de texte). - Frantz Wilde, Sept. 16 (Bloomberg)