Well, I just reviewed the SL News and found the following:
RUF leader Corporal Foday Sankoh questioned a proposal by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to deploy some 6,000 U.N. peacekeeping troops in Sierra Leone. "This is something we have to negotiate," Sankoh said in Abidjan, prior to leaving for Liberia. "The U.N. proposal is not in the peace accord. We never asked the United Nations for a peacekeeping force. We talked about ECOMOG." While the Lom‚ Peace Accord is vague about an expanded role for United Nations peacekeepers, it calls on the U.N. Security Council "to amend the mandate of UNOMSIL (the U.N. Military Observer Force in Sierra Leone) to enable it to undertake the various provisions outlined in the present agreement." The Accord also stipulates that "a neutral peacekeeping force comprising UNOMSIL and ECOMOG shall disarm all combatants of the RUF/SL, CDF (Civil Defence Forces), SLA (Sierra Leone Army) and paramilitary groups" and that "UNOMSIL shall be present in all disarmament and demobilization locations to monitor the process and provide security guarantees to all ex-combatants." Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo called on the U.N. last week to take "full responsibility" for peacekeeping operations in Sierra Leone, complaining that the cost of maintaining the Nigerian-dominated ECOMOG force in Sierra Leone was "unacceptably draining Nigeria financially." As of September 21, UNOMSIL had deployed 107 unarmed military observers in Sierra Leone, only about half of its authorised strength of 210. Sankoh suggested that Annan and the United Nations were biased in favour of President Kabbah, himself a former U.N. official. "They are all friends," he said. "They are all co-workers in the United Nations. This is the same thing they did in 1996: They destroyed the Abidjan peace accord because of sentiment." Sankoh insisted that the RUF had to be consulted on the peacekeeping force. "They can't treat the RUF like children," he said. "They have to respect the leadership of the RUF...ECOMOG can be expanded. So I see no reason why the United Nations is trying to cause problems in West Africa. Show me any place in the world where they have made peace."
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Well Sankoh, I bet Miss Albright might have something to say about that. |
