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Government welcomes gesture to move Sankoh from Sierra Leone

    ABIDJAN

    Liberia has welcomed a decision by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to remove rebel leader Foday Sankoh from Sierra Leone and take him to another country.

    Liberian Information Minister Joe Mulbah told IRIN on Tuesday that it was a “welcome gesture” by ECOWAS as putting Sankoh on trial in Sierra Leone would “exacerbate the war situation”.

    The President of Sierra Leone, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, had announced on Friday that his government was preparing charges against the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) leader for crimes he committed during the war and that he would be put on trial.

    Before leaving Monrovia on Saturday for the ECOWAS summit in Nigeria, Liberian President Charles Taylor, a former rebel leader with historical links with the RUF, had described as “stupidity” the decision to put Sankoh on trial when his men had not demobilised and disarmed, the Liberian News Agency (LINA) reported.

    Mulbah said Liberia wanted peace and reconciliation as “war in Sierra Leone means war in Liberia”. He said intelligence reports received by his government indicated that Liberian dissidents were fighting alongside Sierra Leone’s pro-government militia forces and were a “danger to Liberia’s security”.

    Despite the Liberian government’s stated desire to end the war in neighbouring Sierra Leone, it has often been accused of having an interest in seeing the conflict continue.

    A report this year by Partnership Africa-Canada (PAC) into the connection between diamonds and the Sierra Leone conflict concluded: “The point of the war may not actually have been to win it, but to engage in profitable crime under the cover of warfare.”

    In 1998, Sierra Leone’s government recorded diamond exports of only 8,500 carats, but Belgium’s High Diamond Council (HRD) - the world’s trading centre for rough diamonds - registered imports of 777,000 carats from that country.

    On the other hand, annual mining capacity in Liberia is estimated at 100,000 to 150,000 carats, but the HRD received an annual average of over six million carats from the country.

    Much of the diamond-producing area in Sierra Leone is in rebel hands.

    This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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