International community urged to get tough on RUF

The international community should stop negotiating with Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front (RUF) except to achieve the complete disarmament and demobilisation of the rebel group, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said on Wednesday. RUF rebels who refuse to demobilise should be defeated militarily, it said in a report titled ‘Sierra Leone: Time for a New Military and Political Strategy’. The ICG called on the international community to help Sierra Leone take decisive military action against the RUF and to harmonise the “divergent approaches” of the British government and the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL). Britain is “arming, retraining and re-equipping the Sierra Leone Army (SLA) for a serious campaign”, while UNAMSIL “is still trying to implement the compromise provisions of the Lomé agreement”, the peace pact signed in 1999 by the Sierra Leone government and the RUF, the private multinational organisation said.