09 May 2000
Efforts Intensify to Stabilize Sierra Leone
(Peacekeepers face series of challenges) (900) By Judy Aita Washington File United Nations Correspondent United Nations -- Calling the situation in Freetown "unstable and very tense," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a statement May 8 that he and other U.N. officials were extremely concerned about the rapidly deteriorating situation in Sierra Leone amid reports of continuing military movements by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). "The peace process is in profound crisis because of the recent actions of the RUF, including taking large numbers of our peacekeepers hostage, in effect, or at least detaining them," U.N. Spokesman Fred Eckhard said May 8. "The secretary-general calls upon all parties to do their utmost to defuse the situation," Eckhard said in a statement issued on behalf of the secretary-general. "He once again urges the RUF and its leader, Foday Sankoh, to cease immediately any hostile action." Annan has dispatched the head of peacekeeping operations, Undersecretary-General Bernard Miyet, to Sierra Leone and has appealed to the leaders in the region "to redouble their efforts to bring the situation under control and restore normalcy." He also appealed to the governments of neighboring states "to do everything possible to prevent the reported movement of rebels from the territory of their countries into Sierra Leone," Eckhard said. The U.N. said it has reports of movements of RUF fighters from positions in Guinea and Liberia, Eckhard said. "In the circumstance, the secretary-general continued to stress that in addition to U.N. efforts, a rapid reaction force may be needed in Sierra Leone as soon as possible to assist in restoring conditions conductive to the resumption of the peace process," Eckhard said. "We are coping with it first and primarily by political means. And then militarily we are trying to stabilize things to the extent we can on the ground," the spokesman said. The secretary-general's special envoy for Sierra Leone, Oluyemi Adeniji, is meeting with the presidents of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, and Mali in Conakry, making "last-ditch efforts ... to put the peace process back together, to bring the RUF back in, get everyone working according to the same ground rules, and see if we can't get the peace process back on track," he said. "If that can't happen, then the [Security Council] will have to make a decision how they want this mission to proceed," Eckhard said. He said that withdrawal or adding a well-equipped and specially trained rapid reaction force are two options on how to proceed. The fate of an estimated 500 peacekeepers of the U.N. Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) remains the primary concern for the U.N., which has been able to ferry supplies to detainees in the interior of the country, Eckhard said. Meanwhile, Annan is making arrangements to get the remaining three U.N. contingents into the country to bring UNAMSIL up to its full strength of 11,000. UNAMSIL faces many problems, among them poor communications equipment, which caused the U.N. to erroneously report that RUF fighters were advancing on Freetown. The mistake aggravated the already extremely tense situation in the city and has reportedly undermined Sierra Leoneans' confidence in the United Nations. "Events of today reflect the instability in the country as a whole that has been caused by the RUF's actions," Eckhard said. "People don't know what the RUF is up to or what they are trying to accomplish, but clearly the peace process is in deep trouble." "That level of anxiety is not from one misreporting incident by the U.N. -- it is from the military movements of the RUF," he said. Nevertheless, there are a number of reasons why the U.N. peacekeepers were "a bit off-balance," Eckhard said. UNAMSIL is still in the process of being deployed, he explained, and "the early months of a mission are always unstable. Supplying is going on, setting up, establishing lines of communications -- all of that was in the process of happening" in Sierra Leone. Some of the units "stepped off the plane and within hours or a few days were immediately moved to the interior of the country into a terrain that they are still learning," he added. Furthermore, the U.N. has been carrying out "peacekeeping on a shoestring," Eckhard continued. "Our infrastructure to sustain [peacekeeping] has been cut back through the mid-90s and, frankly, governments have not given us the strength we need here at headquarters to do the kind of professional job we would like to do." "The communications equipment we have in Sierra Leone is not good. It's always breaking down. It resulted in this embarrassing situation on the weekend where we reported an RUF advance when there was none," he said. Each battalion is supposed to come in fully equipped, including having their own transport, communications, weapons, and gear, such as helmets and flack jackets, Eckhard said. "Not every unit has come fully equipped, and we have scrambled to get supplies" out of a U.N. storage facility in Italy to compensate for some of the shortages. But these are the "normal growing pains at the beginning of a mission," Eckhard said. "When a mission like this at the very early stages runs into a deep crisis, it is always a bit off-balance," he said. (The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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