Former junta leader calls on his men to disarm

ECOMOG spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Chris Olukolade told IRIN on Monday that the head of Sierra Leone's former military junta, Johnny Paul Koroma, addressed his men on Friday in Kabala, some 200 km northeast of Freetown, and told them to hand over their weapons. Olukolade, who was also in Kabala, said Koroma - head of the former Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) - told the ex-rebels to disarm immediately and behave themselves as only the well behaved ones would be readmitted into the new Sierra Leone Army. Many members of the former Sierra Leone Army (ex-SLA, led by the AFRC) fled to Kabala after being ousted in late October from the northern town of Makeni by Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels, Olukolade said. Up to Sunday, 2,945 out of an estimated 45,000 ex-combatants had been disarmed, according to statistics from the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL).