Global Witness calls for ban on Liberian timber sales

Global Witness has suggested that the United Nations urgently consider imposing a total ban on Liberian timber exports because their proceeds are funding the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) of Sierra Leone. The appeal follows Monday’s imposition of tighter UN sanctions against Liberia for failing to prove it had severed all ties with the RUF. Global Witness said it recently discovered that two individuals involved in the illicit trade in arms and diamonds to the RUF were now on the board of directors of the Liberian Forestry Development Authority (FDA). Gus Van Kouwenhoven, identified by the UN Expert Panel Report as a Dutch national who was responsible for the logistics of many of the arms deals, is on the board. So too is Talal El-Ndine, a Lebanese who the panel named as the paymaster for Liberians fighting alongside the RUF and those bringing diamonds out of the country. Global Witness cited the FDA’s bi-annual report from January to June 2000, showing that China imported 46.4 percent (worth some US $13 million) of Liberia’s total timber exports. France, it said, imported 17.9 percent, worth about $7 million. Global Witness - which operates in areas where natural resources and environmentally destructive trade funds conflicts or human rights violations - also said that its investigations in French sea ports late in March showed that Liberian timber was “flooding into France”. Other countries listed as importing Liberian timber were Belgium, Britain, Cote d’Ivoire, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Italy, Korea, The Netherlands, Portugal, Senegal, Spain, Thailand, Tunisia and Turkey.