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Security Council Meets on Sierra Leone
The UN Security Council Monday met behind closed doors to discuss a report presented by a high-ranking team of council ambassadors at the end of its October 7-15 trip to West African countries.
Eleven members of the council delegation wrapped up a four-day visit to Sierra Leone Thursday, pledging to make the UN peacekeeping force there as robust as possible.
The head of the delegation, Jeremy Greenstock of Britain, told a press conference here Monday that "the peace process in Sierra Leone has two tracks: one is military and the other is political."
"There must be military pressure on RUF (rebels) and those who back them," he said.
The international community should impose military pressure on the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) to keep the rebels out of conflicts and bring them into the political process in the war-torn West African country, he said.
"(Rebel leader Foday) Sankoh is recognized by everybody to be out of it," he said.
RUF rebels took hostage some 500 UN peacekeepers in May. They were later released and former colonial power Britain sent hundreds of troops to secure the capital Freetown and help get the UN force back on its feet.
Sankoh, the RUF leader, was arrested in June and is facing the trial for the violation of the international humanitarian law and the Sierra Leonean law.
The Security Council is considering the next stage of peacekeeping operations in Sierra Leone and is contemplating a possible increase in the size of the nearly 13,000-strong UN mission in Sierra Leone, known as the UNAMSIL.
In addition, there is rising concern over a series of cross border incursions involving Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, exacerbating an already dire humanitarian and refugee situation in the region.
Apart from Sierra Leone, the council delegation visited Guinea, Mali, Nigeria and Liberia on a fact-finding mission in a bid to strengthen the UN peacekeeping operation.
India's decision to withdraw its contingent from the UNAMSIL has made it harder for the United Nations, which is seeking more troop contributors to beef up its military presence in Sierra Leone as mandated by the Security Council.
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