UN experts allege that Chinese arms on way to Mali peacekeepers went missing

United Nations weapons experts have raised the alarm after tonnes of weapons that were sent by China to its peacekeepers in Mali allegedly disappeared in transit in Ivory Coast, which is under a UN arms embargo.

China has a close relationship with the government in Ivory Coast, funding scores of development projects and granting billions in low-cost loans last year. But Ivory Coast is banned from buying weapons as a result of a decade-long political crisis and brutal 2011 civil war.

In a confidential report presented to the UN Security Council sanctions committee on Friday, the UN experts said the world body should stop allowing arms for its Mali peacekeepers to be shipped through Ivory Coast as a result of the disappearance of 21 tonnes of Chinese military equipment, including 16 tonnes of rifles and ammunition.

It said the shipment passed through Ivory Coast in November but lacked proper permission. The report also said China had understated the shipment's true size by the margin of the missing 21 tonnes.

However, Beijing denied it had misstated the shipment's size and said all the equipment was correctly received by its contingent, rejecting the experts' criticism they had been unable to trace it.

Chinese troops form part of a 12,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission being deployed to help stabilise Mali after a French-led military intervention last year drove off Islamist fighters who had seized the country's north.