Military

DATE=01/21/02

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=UNHCR / SIERRA LEONE / LIBERIA (L-O)

NUMBER=2-285486

BYLINE=DALE GAVLAK

DATELINE=GENEVA

CONTENT=

INTRO: The United Nations refugee agency will start to bring over two-thousand Sierra Leonean refugees back home from camps in Liberia next month. As Dale Gavlak reports from U-N-H-C-R headquarters in Geneva, the return will be the agency's first from Liberia since war broke out in Sierra Leone ten years ago.

TEXT: The U-N refugee agency, U-N-H-C-R, says it is not promoting a massive refugee return to eastern Sierra Leone because the area could not yet handle a large number of people.

But U-N-H-C-R spokesman Ron Redmond says the organization will aid those who want to go back home to vote in the coming elections in May.

///REDMOND ACT///

Most of the refugees in Liberia come from the Kono and Kailahun areas in eastern Sierra Leone. That area, of course, has been devastated by fighting over the past several years between the R-U-F rebels and the government troops who are fighting for control over the diamond-rich areas.

///END ACT///

Mr. Redmond says these areas have now been disarmed and government will soon be restored. This development, he explains, opens the opportunity for the U-N-H-C-R to help returnees reintegrate and rebuild their country.

Government officials, rebel leaders of the Revolutionary United Front and international dignitaries attended a ceremony last Friday to mark the end of Sierra Leone's brutal 10 year civil war. The fighting killed more than 200-thousand people and left thousands more mutilated.

Mr. Redmond says the refugee agency is providing those who return with information to make them aware of some of the challenges they may face.

///2nd REDMOND ACT///

We want these people going back to be very aware of how difficult it is going to be when they get back and there is not going to be a huge support structure for them at this time.

///END ACT///

The U-N-H-C-R provides aid to about 38-thousand Sierra Leone refugees in several camps around the Liberian capital, Monrovia. (Signed)

NEB/DG/GE/KBK