POLITICS-SIERRA LEONE: Libya Offers To Mediate In Conflict

By Lansana Fofana Reprint | | Print |

Lansana Fofana

FREETOWN, Jun 15 1999 (IPS) - Libya has offered to mediate in the conflict in Sierra Leone where more than 30,000 people have died since 1991.

Sierra Leonean President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah returned from Libya at the weekend, with promises that Libya, which had often been accused of backing the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), is now prepared to help settle the conflict diplomatically and join the post-war reconstruction efforts.

“The President’s visit to the Arab Republic of Libya was a big success in terms of getting Libya’s commitment to on-going peace efforts,” says presidential spokesman Septimus Kaikai. “The Libyan government would take direct part in talks currently taking place in Lome, Togo, between the conflicting sides in our country.”

Unconfirmed reports say a senior Libyan official from the ministry of foreign affairs, responsible for African affairs, is attending the talks between rebels and the government of Sierra Leone delegation, in Togo.

Moves are already underway to reopen the Libyan embassy in the Sierra Leonean capital of Freetown and resume diplomatic ties between the two countries.

Diplomatic ties between the two African states were severed in the wake of the civil war in Sierra Leone in 1991, when Libya was accused of supporting the RUF.

Rebel fighters confessed to having received military training in a Libyan desert town, in the course of the conflict.

The more glaring evidence that exposed the hidden hand of Libya in the Sierra Leonean conflict was adduced in a Freetown law court, during the trial last year of RUF leader corporal Foday Sankoh, for treason and related offences.

The state prosecution tendered documents before court purportedly written by the rebel leader, soliciting and receiving financial assistance from Libya, to sustain the war in Sierra Leone.

In one such document, Sankoh acknowledged receiving 29,000 US Dollars from the People’s Bureau of Libya (embassy) in the Ghanian capital of Accra, “to purchase arms and ammunition for fast and smooth operations of the RUF.”

“This is not the time for finger-pointing. We should woo all interests in our conflict, no matter how remote, to achieve lasting solution,” says opposition politician, Sam Kamara.

He said “even Liberia and Burkina Faso should be encouraged to join the mediation process, since these countries are believed to be strongly backing the rebels.”

In March, then ECOMOG (the Nigerian-led West African Peace- keeping force) field commander, Gen Timothy Shelpidi, described Liberia, Libya and Burkina Faso as “rogue states bent on destabilising Sierra Leone.”

Shelpidi’s remark, at a farewell address in Freetown, was denied by all three countries.

Nonetheless, Libya’s role in resolving the crisis in Sierra Leone is viewed by many as positive. Liberia’s leader Charles Taylor, who is a friend of Sankoh and the RUF’s chief backer, is closely linked to the Libyan leader Colonel Muamar Ghadaffi. The colonel is believed to have trained and sponsored Taylor’s National Patriotic Front (NPFL) rebels, in Liberia, in 1989, as well as RUF core fighters.

Ghadaffi is, therefore, seen as the man who can salvage the talks in Lome which are hanging in the balance, with deadlock over the issues of power-sharing and four-year transitional government, as demanded by the rebels, but rejected by the government.

Some observers, however, see Libya’s new-found role in regional peace-making as a diplomatic effort to clean up its hitherto battered image.

Libya is just emerging from 10 years of UN-imposed sanctions, as punishment for alleged sponsorship of international terrorism.

“This new role of Libya is not surprising. Sierra Leone and the Democratic republic of Congo serve as a test cast and I believe the Libyans hold a considerable sway, especially in the Sierra Leonean crisis,” says a European diplomat in Sierra Leone.

So far, Libya has reaffirmed plans to move in investors and take active part in the post-war reconstruction of Sierra Leone.

The conflict in Sierra Leone erupted in 1991 when Foday Sankoh launched a bush war to overthrow the government of then President Joseph Momoh.

Since then, more than 30,000 people have been killed in the conflict, while an estimated quarter of the country’s 4.5 million people are scattered as refugees in neighbouring countries.