Regional agreement on border security

Defense ministers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone have agreed to deploy a team of military observers along their common borders to help end attacks by armed men that have inflamed regional tension, reports said. An urgent summit of the three countries was also recommended. Authorities had met on Saturday in the Malian capital, Bamako, at the invitation of President Alpha Oumar Konare, chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The border observers are to be drawn from ECOWAS member states but a date of deployment was not announced. No specific groups were named as having carried out the cross-border attacks, but the defense ministers discussed the possibility of exchanging lists of people believed to be engaged in subversive activities. Guinea’s minister of territorial administration, decentralization and security, Moussa Solana, on Friday had accused “bands of mercenary armies of various nationalities” of carrying out the incursions. He said they were organized and supported by the governments of Liberia and Burkina Faso, the rebel Revolutionary United Front, from Sierra Leone, and “the so-called Guinea Liberation Movement”. Liberia and Burkina Faso denied involvement.