ECOWAS meets on upsurge of fighting

Foreign ministers of the Ecomomic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) were holding an emergency meeting in the Ivorian capital, Abidjan, today (Monday) following heavy fighting in Sierra Leone between rebels and government troops. An ECOWAS statement received by IRIN said the meeting would consider how to halt the fighting, resume peace negotiations and tackle the humanitarian situation. ECOWAS Executive Secretary Lansana Kouyate told the meeting the community deplored the “lack of military back-up” for the West African intervention force ECOMOG and called for an immediate reinforcement of Nigerian-led troops battling the rebels, AFP reported. Togolese Foreign Ministers Joseph Kocou Koffigoh told AFP that 600 more Nigerian soldiers had arrived in Freetown on Sunday and the Netherlands and the UN had agreed to pay for 400 Malian soldiers and another 100 from Gambia. AFP said Benin, Cote d’Ivoire and Niger had also pledged troops. An ECOWAS official told IRIN that reports on the situation in Sierra Leone were being presented by the commander of ECOMOG, Major General Timothy Shelpidi, by the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in that country, Francis Okelo, and the Sierra Leonean Foreign Affairs Minister, Sama Banya. The meeting, called by the community’s current chairman, President Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo, is being attended by the foreign ministers of Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia and Nigeria, who make up the Committee of Five on Sierra Leone. Burkina Faso, which chairs the Organisation of African Unity, has also sent its foreign minister as has Togo.