Joint delegation to visit Yenga before end of month

The Guinean and Sierra Leonean governments have said they will make a joint visit to the border village of Yenga within the next 10 days to settle a dispute about whether Guinean soldiers are occupying their neighbour's territory. Guinea sent its several hundred troops with tanks and heavy weapons across the border into Yenga in 1998 to help the Sierra Leone government fight off insurgents from the Revolutionary United Front during a 10-year civil war and stop the rebels crossing into the former French colony. Sierra Leoneans complain that the troops who came to assist them, still remain on their soil two years after the war officially ended. Residents in Yenga been putting increasing pressure on their government to take action, complaining that the Guineans harass them, shut down Sierra Leonean business, turf them off farmland, order people to pay taxes or risk detention and that they even prevented ballots being cast in recent local elections. But Guinea's minister for territorial administration Kiridi Bangoura has insisted that is not the case. "Our military forces are located on a hill on our own side of the border," Bangoura said at the end of two days of talks between officials from both countries in the Guinean capital Conakry. "Too many widespread rumours have been circulating on the Sierra Leone side of the border about a pending litigation between the two countries." A communiqué issued late Thursday at the end of the talks announced a joint mission to Yenga, which lies on the Parrot's Beak, a salient of Guinea into eastern Sierra Leone near the point where the borders of both countries meet with that of Liberia. "Our people say that the Guineans have occupied their territory and the Guineans are denying this fact. All we need do now is go on the spot and verify each others' claims," Sierra Leone's Security Minister George Banda Thomas told reporters. Participants at the Conakry talks said the atmosphere had been mostly warm and friendly with both sides paying tribute to the long-standing relationship between the two countries which share a 640 km border. Diplomats said it was unclear why the ownership of Yenga had become the subject of controversy. The town lies on a well-used road between Sierra Leone and Guinea but is not thought to be rich in diamonds, which are found in several nearby areas of both countries.