Military

10 June 2004 – Despite appeals from the top United Nations envoy for Liberia and the West African country's National Transitional Government (NTGL) for the lifting of embargoes on diamonds and timber, the United Nations Security Council today said maintaining sanctions longer would help cement the peace process.

"The members of the Council emphasized that continuation of the measures on Liberia was not meant to be punitive for the NTGL and the Liberian people, but to ensure that the peace process was irreversible," the Council President for June, Ambassador Lauro L. Baja, Jr. of the Philippines, told the press in a statement.

After hearing a mid-term review of the sanctions, the 15 members of the Council noted that there had been no major violations of the measures since last August and that NGTL Chairman Gyude Bryant and the UN Special Representative, Jacques Klein, had told them lifting the sanctions would "enable the NGTL to use Liberia's own resources for its reconstruction and development, to the benefit of the Liberian people," he said.

The Council members, however, "felt that peace was still fragile and that the conditions for the lifting of the sanctions were yet to be fully met," Mr. Baja said.

The Council called on the international community to aid Liberia in a timely manner and to redeem the pledges made at the Reconstruction Conference in February, he added.

A recent report by the Council's Panel of Experts on the Liberia sanctions said the country was still preparing to join the Kimberley certification process to ensure that the export of raw diamonds would not fund civil conflicts.

The report also cautioned that the Government would face difficulties in extending its authority over all of its timber-producing areas.