15 May 2000
Former Ambassador Cohen Reflects on Jackson Trip to Sierra Leone
(Africa expert says hostage mission a wise move) (590) By Jim Fisher-Thompson Washington File Staff Writer Washington -- Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Herman Cohen said the Reverend Jesse Jackson's May 16 trip to Sierra Leone to help restart the peace process and gain the release of U.N. peacekeepers taken hostage is a wise move by the U.S. government. Speaking in a telephone interview on May 12, Cohen said that Jackson, special envoy for the president and the secretary of state for the promotion of democracy in Africa, has had "a lot of experience with freeing hostages. He did a good job in Lebanon during the Reagan years and also he seems to be well acquainted with the" parties in Sierra Leone "so I think it's a good idea." Cohen, a former U.S. Ambassador to Senegal and the Gambia, was senior director of African Affairs at the White House's National Security Council (NSC) before serving as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from 1989-93. He now operates his own business consulting firm and is a senior adviser to the Global Coalition for Africa, an advocacy group for closer U.S.-African business and cultural ties. Jackson told journalists on May 12 that he would be traveling to the region with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Howard Jeter to "convene all relevant forces" to stop the fighting that has cost thousands of lives during the past two years. That effort, he said, will include an attempt to reconstitute the Lome Peace Accord, which Jackson helped broker last year, and which he said has become unraveled. Asked to comment on a recent statement by House African Subcommittee Chairman Ed Royce that the future of U.N. peacekeeping might be on the line in Sierra Leone, Cohen said "it seems to me the signal that has gone out from the U.N. Security Council is that anybody can get away with anything because it is intimidated. "So, if they don't show some strength now, I think Royce is right, it will be difficult to implement peacekeeping in the future," Cohen stated. Cohen stressed, however, that he believed a deployment of U.N. peacekeepers to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) should go on as planned. "In Sierra Leone the rebels were clearly using the peace process as another way of making war and controlling the diamond trade," he said. "But in the Congo I think everyone has reached a limit of what they can achieve by warfare, and I think they are ready now for the implementation of the peace agreement" hammered out in Lusaka over the past two years. Cohen, whose firm (Cohen and Woods International) does business in DRC, added that "Rwanda is very extended militarily, they're taking a lot of punishment from guerillas from inside their own country so being inside Congo doesn't make sense anymore and I think they're ready to implement" the Lusaka Accord. Reflecting from the vantage point of a diplomatic career that spanned five decades, Cohen said the United States has always been most effective when "we (have) had an aggressive policy of intervention diplomatically while showing some leadership. That doesn't mean we took over from everyone else, but that we would provide technical assistance, guidance and the prestige of the United States to get peace initiatives moving." (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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