Overseas-based journalists welcome UN Sanctions

The Association of Liberian Journalists in the Americas (ALJA) has welcomed the imposition of UN sanctions on the government of President Charles Taylor in Liberia, PANA reported. “We hope this is the beginning of serious efforts by the international community, led by the United States and Great Britain, to bring an end to Taylor’s campaign of death and destruction in the Mano River Union Basin, in order to plunder diamonds and other resources,” ALJA said in a statement. [The Mano River basin countries are Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.] The measures include a ban on overseas travel by Liberian government and their spouses, and on trade in diamonds with Liberia. They were imposed by the UN Security Council after the Liberian government failed to prove by a 7 May deadline that it had stopped supporting Sierra Leone’s rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF). ALJA is “appealing to the UN Security Council to begin the process of establishing the legal framework to indict Taylor and others culpable of war crimes and crimes against humanity”, the organisation said. It also called on presidents Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Alpha Omar Konare of Mali, current chairman of the Economic Community of West African States, “to desist from any course of action that would undermine international efforts to bring an end to the state of terror in the Mano River Union Basin”.