UN Security Council orders probe on compliance with sanction

The UN Security Council voted unanimously on Wednesday to re-establish a panel to investigate Liberia's compliance with an earlier demand that Monrovia end its support to Sierra Leonean dissidents, UN News reported. The 15-member Council asked UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to pick a five-member team to conduct the probe, UN News reported. The team, due to table its report by 8 April, will also conduct missions to countries neighbouring Liberia "and compile a brief audit" of the Liberian government's observance of Council's resolution, adopted in 2001. That measure calls for an end to Monrovia's financial and military support to the Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone, the expulsion of rebels from Liberia, and the end of their activities in that country. Under the same resolution, the Council has imposed an arms embargo on Liberia, restricted its diamond sales and slapped a travel ban on its senior officials, "except for humanitarian reasons". Liberia, recently saying that the reason for its punishment had ended following the end of the war between the RUF and the Sierra Leonean government, has asked the UN to lift the sanctions. In addition, Monrovia has said that the sanctions have limited its ability to fend off dissidents - Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy - trying to overthrow the government of President Charles Taylor. Guinea, Sierra Leone, on one hand, and Liberia on the other, have at one time or another accused each other of supporting anti-government dissidents operating from their territories. However, in a sign that their frosty relations are thawing, the presidents of the three countries attended a Rabat reconciliation summit on Wednesday, convened by King Mohammed VI of Morocco. They agreed to improve border security, repatriate their refugees, provide aid to the internally displaced and reactivate the administration of their common economic bloc, the Mano River Union.