UN renews ban on arms, diamonds and timber

The UN Security Council took just four minutes to unanimously extend bans on the sale of arms, diamonds and timber for six to 12 months in post-conflict Liberia. “The Security Council, determining that the situation in Liberia continued to constitute a threat to international peace and security, decided today [Tuesday] to renew its ban on the sale or supply of arms, diamonds and timber,” read the statement. The arms embargo will remain in place for a further 12 months, while bans on the sale of diamonds and timber will stay in place for six months. Travel bans on individuals identified by the UN as a threat to peace in Liberia will also remain in plcae until June 2006. Liberia’s transitional government failed to clean up the valuable diamond and timber sectors, important sources of funds for arms during 14 years of civil war, according to investigations by a UN Panel of Experts. The Panel noted that iron ore and scrap metal is also being sold off for a fraction of its market value and that the government has signed deals on steel that were “not transparent and contained provisions that could be costly to Liberians”. Under intense international pressure, warring parties thrashed out a 2003 peace deal that saw former warlord president Charles Taylor quit power as UN peacekeepers swooped in to restore order. A transitional government remains in place until newly elected president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is inaugurated in mid January. Sirleaf has pledged to work to meet the conditions necessary for the lifting of sanctions and the Council said it would “support the new government of Liberia in its efforts to meet those conditions". The original December 2003 resolution was drawn up before the full contingent of 15,000 UN peacekeepers had arrived to secure the country and rebel fighters controlled most of the forested interior beyond the seafront capital Monrovia. Two years on, the UN Mission in Liberia has restored security and completed the disarmament and demobilisation of over 100,000 former combatants. But police and armed forces are still undergoing UN training and many former fighters are waiting to be reintegrated into their communities through promised education and vocational programmes, according to Secretary General Kofi Annan’s ninth progress report on the UN mission. According to Annan, these former combatants constitute the biggest threat to continued peace in Liberia. “In the calm but fragile atmosphere…the main sources of potentially serious security challenges include former Armed Forces of Liberia personnel dissatisfied with their demobilisation and retirement benefits, ex-combatants awaiting community reintegration programmes, disgruntled supporters of the candidate [George Weah] who failed to win the November run-off elections and members of Charles Taylor’s former armed militia the Anti-Terrorist Unit,” Annan stated in the report. Some of these dissatisfied former fighters appear to be heading over Liberia’s western border into war-torn Cote d’Ivoire. Following investigations, the UN Panel estimated that as many as 1,000 Liberians are in Cote d’Ivoire armed and ready for combat. Many are working on cocoa plantations, vacated in ethnically motivated attacks during the early fighting that followed the September 2002 rebellion that split the country between a rebel-held north and government south. Many more could be lured over the border at short notice, said the Panel. Already children have disappeared from schools in Grand Gedeh County, close to the border with Cote d’Ivoire, where locals turned in a “recruiter” for the Ivorian conflict. Some 10,000 UN and French peacekeepers maintain a shaky peace in Cote d’Ivoire, the world’s top cocoa producing nation and a one time beacon of peace and stability in troubled West Africa.