Lome still valid one year on

The Lome Peace Agreement is "essentially a valid document that is still useable in the present crisis" in Sierra Leone, parliamentarians, church leaders, and representatives of political parties and civil society agreed on Friday. They made that assessment at a seminar held to review the implementation of the 7 July 1999 agreement between Sierra Leone's government and Revolutionary United Front (RUF). In a joint statement, participants in the seminar also called on the government and the international community to encourage the RUF to identify a new leader to replace Foday Sankoh, detained for over a month now.