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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
LIBERIA: UN launches disarmament , but rebels hold on to guns
MONROVIA, 1 December 2003 (IRIN) - The United Nations formally launched a disarmament campaign in Liberia on Monday, with two of the three warring factions insisting that they would not hand in their guns until a row over government jobs was settled.
Jacques Klein, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General to Liberia, used a power tool to symbolically saw in half a rifle that had already been handed in to UN peacekeeping troops.
US ambassador John Blaney similarly destroyed another weapon as senior representatives of the former Liberian government and the LURD and MODEL rebel groups looked on.
But the rebel chiefs were adamant that their fighters would not hand in their weapons until their demands for a share of assistant minister posts and top jobs in parastatal corporations were met.
Klein has categorically refused to link disarmament to jobs in the broad-based transitional government led by Gyude Bryant, which took power on 14 October. The coalition cabinet is charged with leading Liberia to fresh elections in 2005 following a peace agreement which ended 14 years of civil war.
Cheaye Doe, the deputy leader of LURD (Liberians United for Democracy and Reconciliation), said as he watched grinding machines bite through gun metal: "All we want is that the (peace) accord should be respected by all parties and once that is respected, once the government is fully seated, we will be able to participate fully in the disarmament process."
The problem is that while the August peace agreement allocates five ministerial posts and the control of several parastatal corporations to each of the warring factions, it is silent about how a total of 86 assistant minister posts and the number two positions in public sector organisations should be filled.
Like Doe, Thomas Nimely, the chairman of MODEL (the Movement for Democracy in Liberia) demanded that all posts in the transitional government should be filled before his rebel movement started to surrender its guns. In addition, he demanded full details of the benefits which his fighters would receive for participating in the disarmament programme.
"The full package must be disclosed. It is not a hidden agenda. The people that are going to be disarmed must know what is in the package for them," Nimely said.
Only Moses Blah, who served briefly as head of state after former president Charles Taylor resigned and went into exile, said his forces were prepared to start handing over their guns unconditionally.
Last Thursday, all three armed factions walked out of a meeting with Bryant and senior UN officials that was due to discuss the modalities of disarmament. They said then that the programme would not start until a solution to the jobs row was found.
Klein warned on Monday that "internal squabbles and factional differences among the principal actors in this process cannot mar the programme."
The UN supremo in Liberia also insisted in his speech that he was determined to "divorce political interference from disarmament."
The United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) expects that about 40,000 combatants will come forward to hand in their weapons and receive assistance to return to civilian life when the first three demobilisation camps are opened next Sunday.
Klein said the former fighters would be given medical screening and counselling and would receive what he called "a modest stipend to help them on their way to resettlement."
UNMIL has not yet revealed how much money they will get, but diplomats said each former combatant was expected receive about US $300.
Klein said special attention would be given to children, women and disabled combatants. Child soldiers, some of them as young as 10, comprise a large, but still undetermined percentage of each fighting force.
"We will establish interim employment and training activities for the ex-combatants [ such as] apprenticeships and micro-entrepreneurial activities," Klein said.
The US ambassador called on the warring parties in a statement issued at the weekend to "immediately resume their active and cooperative participation" in the disarmament exercise.
According to the disarmament plan, the fighters are supposed to hand in their guns to UN peacekeepers at special demobilisation centres. The first three are being set up in Monrovia, Tubmanburg, a LURD-held town 60 km northwest of the capital, and Buchanan, a MODEL-controlled port city 120 km southeast of Monrovia.
Themes: (IRIN) Conflict
[ENDS]
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