OWN CORRESPONDENT, New York | Friday 8.50am.
THE United Nations was in touch with major military powers on Thursday to bring its peacekeeping force in Sierra Leone rapidly to full strength after rebels there took more UN staffers hostage.
“We are in discussions with the British and the Americans and I also raised this issue in Paris,” UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said.
Annan was speaking to reporters after a meeting of the UN Security Council on the crisis in Sierra Leone, where 92 UN staffers, most of them soldiers, are being held by the Revolutionary United Front.
Diplomats said the western countries could be asked to provide transport and other logistics for the UN Mission in Sierra Leone, which is composed essentially of infantrymen from African and Asian nations. Annan said seven African heads of state are involved in negotiations to secure the release of the hostages. They included President Charles Taylor of Liberia, who has received an assurance from RUF leader Foday Sankoh that a captured UN helicopter crew would be freed on Friday. “We will wait and see if that happens,” he added.
The four-man crew — Russians, according to reports from Moscow — were captured on Monday in Kailahun, in the far east of Sierra Leone. UN officials said it is unclear whether Sankoh’s offer applied also to two passengers captured with them. The six were among 30 people held in Kailahun.
UN spokeswoman Marie Okabe said another 39 hostages were held at Makeni, in the centre of the country. In addition, she said, 23 members of Unamil’s Indian battalion who have been surrounded by RUF fighters at Kuiva, near Kailahun, are now also held hostage.
Annan, who flew in from Paris after a tour of five West African states, returned to his office a day earlier than expected and went directly into a meeting with senior aides. He said the UN wanted to bring Unamsil “up to strength while we take steps to free our people.”
The force has an authorised strength of 11100 but so far only 8700 soldiers have been deployed. — AFP