ECOMOG commander accuses Liberia of arms shipments

ECOMOG Force Commander Major General Timothy Shelpidi told IRIN today (Tuesday) in Abidjan that the international community, especially the United States, should review policy towards Liberia to force Monrovia to stop helping rebels in Sierra Leone. “Charles Taylor does not understand diplomacy,” Shelpidi said, suggesting the US and other states suspend aid to Liberia and even consider imposing sanctions. He said Liberia had been breaking a UN embargo on arms supplies to Sierra Leone at will.

He said helicopters had been operating into Sierra Leone for “a very long time” and mostly at night, in violation of the embargo, supplying arms to the rebels. He said prisoners captured in March by ECOMOG, the West African intervention force in Sierra Leone, had said the helicopters, manned by Liberian troops, had supplied them with arms, food and petrol, and took back with them diamonds from Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and the ousted Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) rebels have been operating around Sierra Leone’s rich diamond fields.

Liberia has consistently denied involvement in Sierra Leone and said so again yesterday (Monday) at an emergency meeting of the ECOWAS special committee on Sierra Leone in Abidjan. Liberian Foreign Minister Monie Captan called for an international investigation to settle whether or not Monrovia was supplying the rebels. Shelpidi said Liberia would easily mask its involvement by only showing investigators the major routes across the border and not the numerous small paths which could be used for arms smuggling.