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WEST AFRICA: IRIN-WA Update 590 (Tuesday 9 November 1999)
CONTENTS:
SIERRA LEONE: Security Council worried over ceasefire violations SIERRA LEONE: Donor mission meets UN, state and ECOMOG officials SIERRA LEONE: AFRC says it supports TRC SIERRA LEONE: Mission to Kailahun District SIERRA LEONE: WFP inter-agency mission to Kenema District LIBERIA: Probe ordered into rights violations at military base LIBERIA: Taylor concerned over hostilities WEST AFRICA: PRRO received some 36 percent of total requirement SENEGAL: Government, rebels to meet in December NIGERIA: Ijaw youths kill police hostages
SIERRA LEONE: Security Council worried over ceasefire violations
The UN Security Council on Monday expressed concern over recent fighting in Sierra Leone and other violations of the Lome Peace Accord signed in July.
Ambassador Danilo Turk of Slovenia said Council members were dismayed at recent violations of the peace treaty which had resulted in a worsening of the security situation, UN news reported.
Fighting was reported in late October in the northern
towns of Makeni and Lunsar between Revolutionary United
Front (RUF) and Armed Forces Revolutionary Council
(AFRC) rebels, as well as other violations including
abductions, rape and looting.
Turk also said Council members had noted reports of
the failure of the RUF (RUF) and Civil Defence Forces
(CDF) to report to demobilisation camps last week.
A UN source in Freetown told IRIN on Monday that some 600 ex-fighters, including AFRC, CDF, RUF and child combatants, had handed in their weapons in the last five days. The RUF and AFRC were allies in Sierra Leone's civil war, while the CDF was made up largely of pro-government militias.
Turk said all parties needed to meet their Lome Agreement obligations in full and called on Sankoh to ensure the participation of the RUF in the Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programmes.
In addition, Council members expressed concern at the fate of refugees and internally displaced persons and underlined the importance of the speedy and effective deployment of the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) for the successful implementation of the Lome Agreement.
SIERRA LEONE: Donor mission meets UN, state and ECOMOG
officials
A high-level donor mission now in Sierra Leone spent
its first day meeting UN, state and ECOMOG officials,
a UN source told IRIN on Tuesday.
On Monday, the team met President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, RUF leader Foday Sankoh, AFRC leader Johnny Paul Koroma, Commissioner for Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Kanja Sesay, Minister of Development Kadie Sesay and the ECOMOG Force Commander, General Gabriel Kpamber.
Disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration and related security concerns were a major focus of all the meetings, the UN said.
On Tuesday the mission met with UN agencies and representatives of local NGOs and visited an amputee camp in Murray Town.
SIERRA LEONE: AFRC says it supports TRC
The AFRC supports the creation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) "to provide a forum for all Sierra Leoneans to tell their stories, express their grievances and identify those who tortured them," the former military junta said in a news release on Tuesday. The peace agreement signed in Lome on 7 July provides for a TRC.
SIERRA LEONE: Mission to Kailahun District
WFP and World Vision will soon be conducting a joint mission to eastern Sierra Leone to set up two programmes, World Food Programme (WFP) in Freetown told IRIN on Tuesday.
These are a food-for-work project under which road repairs will be carried out between Kenema, Daru and Kailahun town and a vulnerable groups feeding programme in Daru and other areas.
SIERRA LEONE: WFP inter-agency mission to Kenema District
A one-day inter-agency mission to assess the humanitarian needs and food security status of internally displaced persons (IDPs) was carried out on 30 October in eastern Sierra Leone, according to a WFP emergency report.
The WFP-led mission, which included the Methodist Church of Sierra Leone (MCSL) and the Agricultural Production Extension and General Services (APEGS), visited the Kandu Leppiama and Sambura chiefdoms in Kenema District. The mission reported that the food security situation in the two chiefdoms was good as the rice harvest had begun, WFP said.
The team said that 38 percent of IDPs had voluntarily returned home and some 12,000, mainly from Kono District, were registered in the area and were receiving assistance.
LIBERIA: Probe ordered into rights violations at military base
President Charles Taylor has urged Justice Minister
Eddington Varmah to investigate reports of human rights
violations at a military training base in Bong County,
north-eastern Liberia.
Taylor said this at a news conference on Monday, a media
source in Monrovia told IRIN.
Human rights organisations say that many civilians arrested by the military in Bong County are taken to the base and tortured instead of being handed over to the police and the judiciary, according to the source.
The Justice Ministry has also started to investigate allegations of corruption by senior government officials, the source told IRIN.
LIBERIA: Taylor concerned over hostilities
President Charles Taylor has expressed concern over fresh hostilities between supporters of RUF leader Foday Sankoh and Johnny Paul Koroma, his former ally, a media source in Monrovia told IRIN.
"We want to discourage any and all action that could deter the (peace) process," Taylor reportedly said at a news conference on Monday. Taylor added that he would soon send an emissary to Sierra Leone to talk to Sankoh and Koroma in order to prevent a return to war, the source said.
The RUF and Koroma's Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) became allies in May 1997 after the AFRC overthrew President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. The two groups took to the bush when ECOMOG ousted the AFRC junta in February 1998.
WEST AFRICA: PRRO received some 36 percent of total requirement
A Protracted Relief and Recovery Operation (PRRO) mounted by the World Food Programme (WFP) has received some US $35 million, amounting to 36 percent of its total requirement of US $95 million, WFP reported. The one-year operation, which started in July, targets some 1.7 million refugees, IDPs and returnees in Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, WFP said.
SENEGAL: Government, rebels to meet in December
Separatist rebels and the Senegalese government are due to hold talks in The Gambia early in December, a source in the Gambian Department of State for Foreign Affairs told IRIN on Tuesday.
"These will be substantive negotiations on all the contentious issues," the official said.
The Mouvement des forces democratic de Casamance (MFDC), led by Abbe Augustin Diamacoune, have been fighting for 17 years now for a separate state in the agriculturally rich Casamance. The MFDC claims that France forcibly united the area with the rest of Senegal at independence.
The Gambia, located between the Casamance and the northern part of Senegal, has undertaken to broker peace. It started this process in June-July by hosting a meeting of MFDC factions aimed at presenting a common position for negotiations with the government in Dakar.
Diamacoune, who is the political head of the separatist movement, discussed issues related to peace negotiations at the weekend with Sengalese Interior Minister Lamine Cisse and the head of Guinea-Bissau's Military Junta, Brigadier General Ansumane Mane, AFP reported.
In January, Senegalese President Abdou Diouf had met with Diamacoune to discuss the holding of peace talks.
NIGERIA: Ijaw youths kill police hostages
Militant Ijaw youths in Nigeria's volatile oil-rich Niger Delta have killed seven policemen they kidnapped on Thursday, news reports said, quoting the police commissioner for Bayelsa State.
The youths seized the seven, who included two senior officers, in the village of Odi, ostensibly in retaliation for last week's police action during clashes between Ijaws and Yorubas in a predominantly Yoruba neighbourhood in Lagos.
"The Ijaws claim the police were partial in settling the fight," Joy Ngwakwe, programme officer for the Social and Economic Rights Action Centre in Lagos, told IRIN on Tuesday.
Initial reports were that the police hostages were Yoruba.
However, Bayelsa State Police Commissioner D. Bwala
told reporters on Monday that there was only one Yoruba
among the hostages, `The Guardian' newspaper reported.
His disclosure, the newspaper said, "debunked
allegations that the act was in retaliation" for
the Lagos clashes.
Reuters said feuds between the two ethnic groups originated
in the western part of the Delta where "clans
from both tribes each lay claim to the same land, which
they believe contains significant oil reserves".
This is only part of the problem," Ngwakwe said. "The two communities are fighting one and other but both are victims of oil exploration. They should be fighting the oil companies."
Oil firms initially bore the brunt of violent attacks by militant youths in the Delta who have accused the multinationals of destroying their environment by failing to clean oil spills.
Abidjan, 9 November 1999; 19:28 GMT
[ENDS]
[IRIN-WA: Tel: +225 217366 Fax: +225 216335 e-mail: irin-wa@ocha.unon.org ]
Item: irin-english-1938
[This item is delivered in the "irin-english" service of the UN's IRIN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations. For further information, free subscriptions, or to change your keywords, contact e-mail: irin@ocha.unon.org or Web: http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN . If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer.]
Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 1999
Subscriber: afriweb@sas.upenn.edu Keyword: IRIN
Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
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