By Lansana Fofana
FREETOWN, May 4 1999 (IPS)

Sierra Leone has rejected a UN ceasefire proposal to end the country’s eight-year conflict.

“Government finds the proposed ceasefire unacceptable and will therefore continue to uphold the twin track approach in the peace process adopted by the UN Security Council,” said a statement by the Sierra Leonean government Tuesday.

The UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy to Sierra Leone, Francis Okelo, who is also head of the UN Observer Mission in Sierra Leone (UNOMSIL), proposed that Sierra Leone’s belligerents cease hostilities for the duration of peace talks.

“You cannot talk and fight at the same time because that will distract the dialogue process,” Okelo said Monday, referring to the current consultations among rebel leaders in Togo.

“As a confidence-building measure, it is important that both sides refrain from any military action…and indeed both sides should stick to their positions currently controlled,” he added.

The government says a genuine ceasefire would only come about if rebels vacate all the mining and viable economic areas which they control, as well as leaving the main highways that link the capital to the provinces.

Once the rebels have vacated those areas, any ceasefire arrangements should be monitored by “an adequate number of UN peacekeepers,” says the government.

Both sides appear unlikely to give in to the other. The rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) backed by renegade elements of the former Sierra Leone Army (SLA) control the diamond-rich districts of Kono in the east, the agriculturally-rich districts of Kailahun, Bombali, Tonkolili and Kambia in the north.

Military experts say more than 70 percent of Sierra Leonean territory is controlled by rebel forces. And analysts believe the rebels are calling for an early ceasefire so that they will be able to bargain from a position of strength.

Meanwhile, the government feels confident enough to pursue the military option, given that it has acquired two new helicopter gunships, trained hundreds of new fighters backed by the more than 10,000 West African peacekeeping force, ECOMOG.

The rebel high command is currently meeting in the West African state of Togo, under the auspices of ECOMOG (the Economic Community of West African States) chairman Gnasingbe Eyadema, who is also the president of Togo.

The aim of the rebel “in-house” meetings is to draw up proposals for substantive talks with the government of Sierra Leone.

RUF leader Corporal Foday Sankoh, who has spent two years in jail and was appealing against a death sentence slammed against him, was given temporary reprieve, by a Freetown Appeals Court, to travel to Togo for the meetings.

With the turn of events on the battle field, it seems the government is not going to give in to any UN-brokered ceasefire at this time.

“We are sure riding for a deadlock,” says Mike Sesay, a political scientist in the capital Freetown. “I see a scenario where the government will press ahead with the he military option and only open up tangible dialogue when the rebels are flushed out of major economic areas.”

The civil war in Sierra Leone, which erupted in 1991, has claimed more than 30,000 lives and displaced a quarter of the country’s 4.8 million population, according to aid agencies operating in the west African country.

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