Government rejects demands of West Side Boys.

Sierra Leonean Information Minister Julius Spencer said in a BBC interview aired on Thursday that the government would not accede to the demands of the West Side Boys, a group of outlawed fighters who are holding six British troops and a Sierra Leonean soldier hostage. The outlaws are demanding the release of their leader, 'Brigadier Bomb Blast', from prison; a review of the Lome peace accord that was meant to end the nine-year civil war, the setting up of an interim government, and that they be integrated into the new Sierra Leonean army. "There is very little chance of this because they are hard core criminals," a source at the state-owned radio and television service told IRIN on Friday.

A spokesman for the militia identifying himself as 'Colonel Cambodia' made his demands to the BBC on a satellite phone provided by the British military for better communication to negotiate on the hostages, the BBC said. The group was thought to comprise mainly ex-Sierra Leone Army (ex-SLA) soldiers who had been loyal to the junta that ruled Sierra Leone from May 1997 to February 1998. However, the media source described the West Side Boys as "rejects in society" without any credibility to negotiate, adding that the ex-SLA soldiers now reintegrated into the army under a British-run training scheme "hate the West Side Boys".

The source said relatives of the West Side Boys had left the capital on Friday for the Occra Hills, the group's stronghold east of Freetown, to join British officials, the Sierra Leone government and the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) in discussions to free the detainees.