Agreement on need to beef up UNAMSIL

Members of the UN Security Council agreed on Tuesday that the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) needed to be strengthened immediately, the UN Department of Public Information (DPI) reported. The consensus was reached after closed-door consultations and a briefing on the situation in Sierra Leone by Hedi Annabi, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations. Annabi outlined the structure of the proposed expansion, recommended by Secretary-General Kofi Annan in a 19 May report, and the peacekeepers’ deployment. The proposed expansion would increase UNAMSIL’s authorised strength from 13,000 to 16,500. However, US Ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke told reporters after the meeting that Washington wanted more details from the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations on what the strengthened force would be asked to do before signing off on another costly increase, news organisations reported. He also said that Revolutionary United Front (RUF) leader Foday Sankoh and others should be tried under international auspices but without setting up a new UN war crimes tribunal which would be expensive, time-consuming and slow. “At the same time we feel that the actions of him (Sankoh) and his henchmen fully justify putting him under some kind of international umbrella so that the proceedings, however they are structured....have the weight of international law behind them,” Reuters reported Holbrooke as saying. Sankoh and others were granted an amnesty under the Lome Peace Accord signed in July 1999 but since then there have been continuing reports of human rights violations by rebel forces in Sierra Leone and international bodies have argued that those guilty of such crimes should be punished.