UN, ECOWAS try to decide fate of surrendered weapons

The UN and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) are examining how to dispose of large numbers of weapons left over from Liberia's seven-year civil war, a UN official told IRIN on Thursday. The UN Secretary General's Special Representative, Felix Downes-Thomas, said two options were under consideration for scrapping surrendered arms and ammunition stored in containers at the ECOMOG base near Monrovia's central port. One option which is being considered, Downes-Thomas said, would be to destroy all of the weapons. The other, put forward by the Liberian government, would be to destroy all unserviceable weapons while serviceable arms would be "the subject of discussion between the government and the UN". According to the BBC, tens of thousands of weapons and millions of rounds of ammunition were handed over to ECOMOG by the former rebel groups and the national armed forces during a disarmament exercise in early 1997.