UN, ECOWAS Meet to Review Ceasefire in S. LeoneThe one-day meeting reviewed the implementation of the ceasefire agreement signed in Abuja on November 10, 2000 between the Sierra Leonean government and the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) to relaunch the Lome peace agreement of July 1999.The ECOWAS Secretariat said the Lome peace agreement, which formally ended the war between the RUF and the government, had fallen behind schedule. "The disarmament, demobilization and reconstruction process have fallen behind schedule and there is need to review the situation in the light of this development," the secretariat said. The meeting came after a special ECOWAS summit on April 11, which discussed the crisis along the borders of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, where a bloody insurgency has endangered hundreds of thousands of people. The meeting will be followed Tuesday by another meeting to be attended by the parties to the Abuja ceasefire agreement on Sierra Leone, which comprises the U.N. and the ECOWAS Committee of Six on Sierra Leone. The committee is made up of Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Mali, Togo and Guinea. Tuesday's meeting, besides to review the ceasefire agreement, is also expected to evaluate the reports of the U.N., the government of Sierra Leone and the RUF on the Abuja ceasefire agreement. Sierra Leone's civil war has claimed at least 200,000 lives since it erupted in March 1991. |
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