By Lansana Fofana
FREETOWN, Oct 19 1999 (IPS)

US Secretary of State, Medeline Albright, who is on a six-nation African tour, this week visited Sierra Leone, where she urged the government and leaders of the rebel groups to implement the terms of the July peace agreement “without any further delay.”

“In my meeting with President Tejan Kabbah and the leader of one of the rebel groups, Major Johnny Paul Koroma, I stressed to them that all parties must keep to their words and co-operate fully with the disarmament and demobilisation programme which must commence soonest,” Albright said at a press briefing Monday, in the capital Freetown.

After visiting a camp which houses more than 500 persons, whose hands or legs were brutally chopped off during the eight-year long war, Albright said her government fully supports efforts at consolidating peace and building the foundation for national reconciliation in Sierra Leone.

“The U.S. is currently sponsoring the documentation of the atrocities committed against civilians…and we very well understand where the greatest share of responsibility lies,” she said.

The U.S., which had always remained indifferent to the conflict in Sierra Leone, had received so much bashing from the local population. Many cite the conflict in Kosovo as attracting the early response of the U.S. administration, which rushed in with troops and money to help the population there.

“These Americans are full of double standards. Perhaps their coy attitude to our crisis is a clear case of the non-strategic importance of our country to their overall interests,” says a lecturer at the University of Sierra Leone.

Albright, however, says her country will support the setting up of a Truth Commission and will back any external initiatives for the dispensation of justice and the possible indictment of the perpetrators of some of the heinous crimes committed against humanity.

“The killings must stop, hostages must be released,” Albright said. “The only way that reconciliation can come about is when people truly have a sense that justice is being done, and this has to happen in order to break the cycle of impunity.”

Albright pledged 55 million US Dollars to the resettlement of displaced persons and the reintegration of former fighters, saying that the U.S. will continue to be the largest provider of humanitarian assistance to the country.

She also announced that Washington was prepared to take the lead in forgiving Sierra Leone’s 65 million US Dollars in debts, once the country has an International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme in place.

After visiting troops of the Nigerian-led regional peace- keeping force ECOMOG and paying tribute to their role in maintaining stability in Sierra Leone, Albright committed 11 million US Dollars for new logistical assistance to their operations.

Perhaps, more fascinating was Albright’s idea of how to fight the illegal diamond trade, which has been used to fuel the killings in the West African country. A further one million US Dollars has been committed to the Strategic Mineral resources Commission “as an incentive to clean up the black market in diamonds which has been used to sustain the rebellion.”

The Commission would be headed by Revolutionary United Front (RUF) leader, Foday Sankoh, whose rebels control all productive mining zones in the country.

The two rebel leaders, Koroma of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and Sankoh of the RUF have, however, promised that disarmament proper will start this week, after a successful sensitisation tour of areas under their control.

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