WEDNESDAY, 3.30PM
THE Organisation of African Unity has given the West African multinational peacekeeping force Ecomog a mandate to use force to drive out the military regime that seized power in Sierra Leone on May 15.
Twenty-nine OAU heads of state ended the OAU summit in Harare on Tuesday with a closed session to discuss African conflicts, with Sierra Leone topping the agenda. After the meeting OAU secretariat representative Ibrahim Dagash said: “The countries of the region were mandated to take the necessary action through Ecomog.” The decision to endorse a military option had been adopted first by the OAU foreign ministers in their meeting last week. The heads of state were unanimous in taking a decision not to recognise this regime at all, he added.
Dagash insisted the military action taken thus far, starting on Monday with a bombardment of Freetown by Nigerian warships, had been an Ecomog action and not a Nigerian action.
United Nationa secretary-general Kofi Annan on Wednesday described the coup as a “senseless enterprise” which he hoped would end without further bloodshed. “How the coup leaders expect to survive I don’t know. I wish they would be sensible and cut their losses and walk away. If the use of international force becomes a last resort and inevitable, then it may have to come to that,” Annan said before meeting British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook in London.
Meanwhile, pro-coup Sierra Leonean troops have released all 300 captured Nigerian soldiers who were being used as human shields. “Their release is a gesture of goodwill as the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council is exploring all avenues to bring the situation to a peaceful end,” a junta radio broadcast said.
Following Tuesday’s successful evacuation of 1217 foreigners from Freetown by US Marines, France on Wednesday launched a similar operation from two naval vessels to rescue the remaining foreign nationals in Freetown.