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The United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) is continuing to encourage former rebel leaders to bring their constituencies under control, Fred Eckhard, spokesman for the UN Secretary-General said on Wednesday in New York.
Johnny Paul Koroma, leader of the former Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), went on a sensitisation programme to the Occra Hills to meet with his field commanders and get them to register in the disarmaments programme, Eckhard said. It is the first time that Koroma has been in his rebel stronghold since his return to Freetown on 3 October.
Koroma was accompanied by the commander of the West African Peace Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) and UNAMSIL’s Chief Military Observer, Brigadier General Subash Joshi, the UN reported.
Several thousand rebels are still in the Occra Hills and are believed to be holding abductees and child combatants, the UN said, despite a provision in the 18 May ceasefire agreement signed in Lome, Togo, which stipulated the “immediate release of prisoners of war and non-combatants”.
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