WEST African leaders gathered in the Nigerian capital on Sunday to discuss backing for a regional military force to bolster a United Nations mission struggling to enforce a peace accord in war-ravaged Sierra Leone. Earlier, a mini-summit of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) met into the early hours preparing a report on plans by the 16-nation bloc to field 3000 troops in Sierra Leone. The UN appealed for additional troops after Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels captured hundreds of its peacekeepers. They were also likely to support a lifting of immunity granted to RUF leader Foday Sankoh under the power-sharing peace accord, thus clearing the way for his trial for war crimes as a direct result of the abductions. Sankoh, a member of Sierra Leone President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah’s government under the power-sharing deal, has been arrested after going into hiding at the height of the hostage crisis. The Sierra Leone crisis has overshadowed ceremonies in Abuja marking the 25th anniversary of the founding of ECOWAS to promote economic integration in West Africa.