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U.N. Ambassadors Visit Eastern Sierra Leone
A group of U.N. ambassadors visited eastern Sierra Leone Tuesday, telling residents there that the world body was determined to put an end to their country's brutal civil war, a U.N. spokesman said here.
Stephane Dujarric, the U.N. spokesman, told a press conference that the ambassadors, led by Jeremy Greenstock of Britain, visited peacekeepers in two towns to the south of the rebel-held diamond mines in Kono which helped fuel the civil war.
"The Security Council is determined to stop the brutality, the diamond problems and to bring peace to Sierra Leone," Greenstock said in the eastern town of Kenema before pushing on another town, Daru.
"There are problems in the Middle East, trouble in East Timor and problems in Indonesia, but the largest members of the Security Council have come to Sierra Leone to have a first hand appreciation of the security situation in the country," he said.
The Security Council delegation, which arrived in Sierra Leone on a regional tour Monday, met with local officials and reviewed Indian peacekeepers while in Kenema.
The ambassadors of the other four permanent Security Council members -- China, France, Russia and the United States -- are also visiting Sierra Leone, along with six other ambassadors from the council member countries.
A second group of ambassadors traveled to the towns of Port Loko in the west and Mile 91 Tuesday to visit peacekeepers and disarmament and refugee camps there.
The rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) took up arms in May in defiance of a 1999 peace accord to end the civil war at the height of which the rebels hacked limbs off defenseless civilians to stop them supporting the government.
The rebels held some 500 U.N. soldiers hostage in May this year in a dispute over disarmament, dealing a heavy below to the U.N. peacekeeping operations in the West African country.
RUF leader Foday Sankoh was arrested in May and he is now in prison facing trial for the violation of the international humanitarian law and the Sierra Leonean law.
The council delegation began its mission in Conakry, capital of Guinea, Sunday and it will spend three days in Sierra Leone beginning Monday, and proceed to Bamako, capital of Mali, and Abuja, capital of Nigeria, and then to Monrovia, capital of Liberia, before returning to New York on October 15.
The Security Council is considering the next stage of peacekeeping operations in Sierra Leone and is contemplating a possible increase in the size of the nearly 13,000-strong U.N. mission in Sierra Leone, known as the UNAMSIL.
In addition, there are rising concerns over a series of cross-border incursions involving Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, exacerbating an already dire humanitarian and refugee situation in the region.
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