FRIDAY, 4.00PM
A NIGERIAN general on Friday denied that Monday’s failed attack on focres of the Sierra Leone junta by Nigerian-led Ecomog peacekeeping forces was part of an OAU-mandated operation to oust the coup leaders.
General Victor Malu, who has been called back from Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown to Nigeria for consultations with military strongman General Sani Abacha, said the “real operation is yet to start”.
“We had some confrontation on Monday and it was not a planned attack to start [the] operation. We were fired upon and we had to return fire and in the course of it, we sustained some casualties,” he said of Ecomog’s rpouting by junta troops supported by Revolutionary United Front rebels. “The action … to get the rebels out of Sierra Leone has not started, that is the reason why I am here [in Nigeria],” said Malu.
Both troops and logistical support are at present being sent to Freetown from Nigeria, Liberia, Ghana and Guinea, according to reports which put the number of peacekeepers in Freetown at between 3 500 and 4 000, and confirming that the Freetown airport is firmly under the control of Ecomog troops.
A source at Ecomog headquarters in Monrovia, Liberia, said the deployment of the peacekeeping force into Sierra Leone is still continuing and troop strength on the ground in Freetown is now “very comfortable”.
Meanwhile, new talks aimed at a peaceful resolution to the crisis have been mooted for Friday after the failure of talks on Thursday. The West African mediating team led by Ghanaian army chief Brigadier Seth Obeng and deputy foreign minister Victor Ghebo returned to Nigeria on Thursday after talks with the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council junta broke down when they refused the accept the junta’s demand for two years in power. The new talks were expected to have begun in Freetown’s defence headquarters at midday on Friday. *
Amid international condemnation of the coup in Sierra Leone, Pierre Bouyoya of Burundi has gone ahead and recognised the military government of Major Johnny Paul Koroma.