By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 6 1999 (IPS)

The United Nations Monday painted a grim picture of the humanitarian situation in Sierra Leone where renewed fighting between government and rebel forces threatened to derail relief supplies of food and medicine.

Kevin Kennedy, spokesman for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told reporters that UN and other relief agencies have access only to about one-third of the country whose total land area is about 27,653 square miles.

“If access continues to be denied, the situation could get worse,” he warned.

Kennedy, who just returned to New York after a visit to Sierra Leone, said about 3,000 civilians had been killed since fighting began last month. “If the military and political situation deteriorates, there will be a very serious humanitarian crisis,” he declared.

The World Food Programme (WFP), which has been handling large scale food distribution in Sierra Leone, already had lost about 3,000 metric tons of food to looters. “The food situation is serious but not acute,” he said.

Kennedy said there was a “deliberate campaign to terrorise civilians” as rebel forces resorted to “forced amputations.”

After a visit to Sierra Leone last May, UN Under Secretary- General Olara Otunnu appealed for urgent international assistance to help children whose arms and feet had been savagely chopped off by armed groups fighting the government.

Otunnu said he saw at least 300 victims of reprisals at the Connaught Hospital in the Sierra Leonean capital of Freetown. “This is estimated to constitute only a small proportion of those who have been maimed by the atrocities,” he said.

Last month there were reports that, amid fresh fighting, forced amputations were continuing with greater intensity and greater savagery.

The upsurge in fighting came after a five-year long civil war that killed more than 10,000 people and displaced several hundred thousands, ended in 1996 when a democratically-elected government under President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah signed a peace treaty with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF).

In May 1997 Kabbah was ousted in a military coup, then was restored to power in March 1998 with the help of a regional African peace keeping force – the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) – led by neighbouring Nigeria.

Although Kebbah regained office after his 10-months in exile, remnants of the RUF continued fighting despite the peace treaty.

Last week, James Jonah, visiting Finannce Minister of Sierra Leone and a former UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, told a UN news conference that the conflict in his country was not internal, but regional.

Jonah accused Liberia and Burkina Faso of providing assistance to rebel forces in their attempts to overthrow the legitimately elected government of Sierra Leone. He also referred to “the involvement of Ukrainian mercenaries” fighting on the side of the rebels.

“We believe that the (UN) Security Council and the major powers should not remain silent,” he said. “You cannot pursue rogue states in the Middle East and in Europe, and not pursue rogue states in Africa.”

Jonah said his government had sent two letters to the Security Council about Liberia’s involvement in the fighting. He said the Council could not deal with atrocities only in Kosovo and not those taking place in Sierra Leone, as well.

“We believe that the time has come for the international community and the Security Council to be more even-handed in dealing with this crisis.”

His government believed that there was no need for fresh talks with the rebels because of the existence of the 1996 peace treaty which had been endorsed by the Security Council, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and by the leader of the rebels, Fonday Sankoh.

What was needed, he said, was the genuine implementation of the peace accord.

Asked what he expected from the Security Council, Jonah said the Council should make it clear – as it had done during the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait – that the world would not tolerate any interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation state, in this case by Liberia and Burkina Faso.

“We are not asking for a no-fly zone, but we need a more robust response from the Council,” he added.

He also accused the rebel forces of using the country’s resources, in particular diamonds, to purchase arms and fund a mercenary force.

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