Britain to ship arms

Britain has notified a UN Security Council sanctions committee that it will be exporting live ammunition and military equipment to Sierra Leone for use by the new army, the second such shipment from the United Kingdom to Freetown this year.

“The supply of military equipment comprises a small part of Britain’s pledge of 4.5 million pounds to help retrain the Sierra Leonean army,” a British foreign ministry spokesman in London told IRIN. “Britain has given another 5.5 million pounds directly to ECOMOG,” the spokesman added.

Paragraph four of UN Security Council Resolution 1171 in June 1998 says:

“States shall notify all exports from their territories of arms or related materiel to Sierra Leone to the (sanctions) Committee established by resolution 1132 (1997)...”

Paragraph two of the June 1998 Resolution bans all arms exports to “Sierra Leone other than to the Government of Sierra Leone through named points of entry on a list to be supplied by that Government to the (UN) Secretary-General”.

“We are notifying the UN sanctions committee out of courtesy and in the interest of transparency,” the foreign ministry spokesman said.

Reuters reported that, according to a letter circulated by the sanctions committee’s chairman, Britain notified the body that it was exporting 132 general purpose machine guns and two million rounds of ammunition for them, mortars, rifles and other military supplies. The Foreign Office spokesman told IRIN he was unable to confirm the details of the arms and ammunition.