UN team leader says security is number one concern

The new leader of UN relief efforts in Liberia said on Sunday that his number one priority was to achieve better security so that humanitarian agencies could bring food, clean drinking water and medical care to the beleaguered population of this war-torn country. “Security is the number one, two and three need here,” said Ross Mountain, the UN Special Humanitarian Coordinator for Liberia, who arrived to take up his post on Friday. The New Zealander, who previously served in the same capacity in Liberia from 1992 to 1993, told reporters at his first news conference that he was glad to see a second batallion of Nigerian peacekeeping troops arriving to build up the strength of a West African stabilisation force that is eventually due to number 3,250 men. Mountain said he was also encouraged by news on Sunday night of progress at the Liberian peace talks in Accra, which could lead to a comprehensive peace agreement being signed “in the next couple of days.” But he stressed that despite an uneasy ceasefire which has held in the capital Monrovia since 5 August, “The situation on the ground is still very volatile and on the humanitarian front there are certainly no grounds for complacency.” Government and rebel fighters still bear arms openly on the streets three days after all combatants were supposed to have left, leaving security in the hands of about 1,000 Nigerian soldiers. And on Saturday rebel fighters hijacked an Oxfam four-wheel drive vehicle at gunpoint in one of the city’s main avenues in broad daylight. Liberia is awash with child soldiers fighting for both the government and two rebel movements, which now control up to 90 percent of the West African country. Mountain said it would be an immense challenge to get thousands of kids “who have learned to play with a gun and kill” back into school. Liberia has been in a state of near constant civil war since 1989, but the departure into exile of former warlord and president Charles Taylor on 11 August raised hopes of a lasting solution to the conflict. Mountain said he regretted the world had not paid the same attention to Liberia over the last couple of years as it had to Afghanistan and Iraq, even though the country had been the target of harsh UN sanctions because of international disapproval of Taylor’s role in destabilising other West African countries. “Liberia is an example of what happens to a country when a crisis is neglected and a crisis is forgotten,” Mountain said, noting that last year’s US $42 million appeal for the country had met a feeble international response while a $2.2 billion UN appeal for Iraq had been generously funded. Justin Bagirishya, the head of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in Liberia, revealed that 4,300 tonnes of WFP food were still left in warehouses in the port of Monrovia - much more than the 2,000 to 3,000 tonnes first thought – following rampant looting over the past month when the port was in rebel hands. But he observed that 3,900 tonnes of this was maize meal – a cereal which rice-loving Liberians avoid if they can at all help it. The remaining 400 tonnes consisted of bulgur wheat. The WFP began distributing this food to displaced people at the weekend. Bagirishya remarked: “The constraint is not only the quantity of food which has been lost, but the quality of the food which has been taken away.” He stressed there was an urgent need to bring in more oil, sugar and corn soya blend, which were vital to address the growing problem of child malnutrition. Forklift trucks and spare parts for various items of port equipment would be shipped into Monrovia’s rundown port over the next few days to ease the task of unloading the first food ships when they arrived, Bagirishya said.