Online Reporter
Saturday, May 20, 2000. — The United Nations is looking to increase its peacekeeping force in Sierra Leone, as US presidential envoy Jesse Jackson shuttles round the region trying to help secure the release of more than 330 UN troops still held by rebels.
Jackson, who arrived in Nigeria on Thursday at the start of his peace shuttle, criticised rebel leader Foday Sankoh and his Revolutionary United Front for taking peacekeepers hostage and flouting a 1999 peace deal.
“The RUF had a golden opportunity to disarm, to disengage and rejoin the society,” Jackson said in Benin City, where he held talks with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo. They, in a real sense, violated the whole world when they chose to maintain their armament, when they chose to take UN soldiers hostage,” he added.
Jackson was expected later in Liberia, whose president is trying to negotiate the release of the U.N. hostages. At the United Nations in New York, Western diplomats said that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was expected to propose a 16 500-strong UN force in a report next week up from its projected strength of 11 100. The force stood at 8 000 when it was caught off-guard by rebel attacks and an advance on the capital Freetown earlier this month.
Sankoh’s fighters attacked the UN force in the central Makeni area and took hostage up to 500 peacekeepers and military observers after a dispute over disarmament at the start of May
“The RUF must not be allowed to exist as a military threat to Sierra Leone.” Jackson said at his talks in Benin City, in southern Nigeria. Sankob himself, who disappeared after a shooting at his home on May 8, was captured on Wednesday .
—Reuters.
