UN says no disarmament before full deployment of peacekeepers

The United Nations has said categorically that it will not resume its suspended disarmament programme in Liberia until UN peacekeeping troops are fully deployed right across the West African country. Souren Seradayrian, the deputy head of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), told IRIN in an interview on Tuesday night that this was one of three pre-conditions for disarmament to resume which had been firmly agreed with the country's three warring factions. Seradayrian declined to give a firm date for the resumption of disarmament, following a false start in early December, but he said the full deployment of UNMIL troops throughout Liberia would be completed "sometime in March." General Daniel Opande, the UNMIL Force Commander, suggested last week that deployment might only be completed in April. There are currently about 11,500 UN peacekeepers in Liberia. A further 3,500 are still due to arrive to bring the peacekeeping force up to its full strength of 15,000 men. Seradayrian said the other two pre-conditions for the resumption of disarmament, were the completion of a sensitisation campaign among former combatants and the construction of four cantonment sites where fighters would hand in their weapons and undergo a registration and screening process. As soon as those conditions are met the actual disarmament will start. There is no divergence of views on this", he said. A public awareness campaign to explain to combatants how the disarmament, demobilisation and rehabilitation process will work, began on 20 January, but construction of the four cantonment sites has not yet started. "We have made arrangements for four cantonment sites to be built and contracts have been issued to NGOs to build cantonment sites in Tubmanburg, Gbarnga, Buchanan and VOA compound on the Monrovia-Kakata Highway," Seradayrian said. The deputy special representative of the UN Secretary General in Liberia, said the three warring parties, who signed a peace agreement last August, had agreed to submit a complete list of their fighters that would help UNMIL run the disarmament campaign in "a well organized manner." However, Seradayrian added: "We have not received all of the list,". Nobody knows for certain how many men, women and children still bear arms for the former government of Charles Taylor and two rebel groups, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL). UNMIL estimated 38,000 before it made an abortive attempt to start the disarmament process in December without sufficient preparation. More recently, the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank, produced an estimate of 48,000 to 58,000. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan referred in his speech to a donors' conference on Liberia earlier this month, to the existence of 53,000 former combatants. Each demobilised fighter will receive a phased cash payment of US $300, of which the first $75 will be paid when he surrenders his weapons. However, Seradayrian was at pains to stress that this "is not a weapon buying programme, but a sustainable process to cater to the fighters' educational and vocational needs".