After African trip, Security Council team urges stronger UN mission in Sierra Leone
17 October -- Returning from a five-nation visit to West Africa, a Security Council delegation has recommended that the United Nations bolster its peacekeeping operation in Sierra Leone, whose conflict is having an "increasingly alarming" impact on the region.
"The complex of problems in Sierra Leone and its neighbours represents an extraordinary challenge, which requires extraordinary action," the 11-member team says in its report released today at UN Headquarters. The delegation returned to New York on Saturday.
To meet these challenges, the report proposes to strengthen the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) "in terms of numbers, effectiveness and capability," as recommended by Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Mr. Annan has called for increasing UNAMSIL's authorized strength from 13,000 to 20,500 military personnel.
As part of its effort to examine the regional dimensions of the Sierra Leone conflict, the delegation focused on the role played by Liberian President Charles Taylor.
"The view was firmly and frequently expressed within Sierra Leone that the cause of many of the country's problems lay in the support provided to [the rebel] Revolutionary United Front by President Taylor, motivated partly by his own political and security concerns and partly by his interest in profits from diamonds mined in Sierra Leone," says the report, while noting that President Taylor "vigorously" denied these accusations.
In meetings with President Taylor, members of the mission warned him that Liberia's instability and isolation could increase if its activities went beyond its legitimate security interests, according to the report. The leader of the Council delegation, Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock of the United Kingdom, told reporters on his return that President Taylor "understood that message, although I think it will be very difficult for him to get out of the habit of taking an opportunistic approach -- which has been a marked feature of his involvement in the Sierra Leone crisis."
On the special war crimes court for Sierra Leone, the mission has called for striking the right balance "between the requirements of justice and the need to minimize any potential disincentive to entering the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration process that the threat of prosecution may represent -- especially to child combatants."
Praising the resilience of the people of Sierra Leone, the report underscores that Sierra Leone is a challenge that the UN and the international community as a whole "should gather the collective will to meet."
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