Rebel Leader's Silence Fuels Death Rumours
Rebel Leader's Silence Fuels Death Rumours
May 15, 2000
Paul Ejime
PANA Correspondent
LAGOS, Nigeria (PANA) - World attention has continued to focus on Nigeria for the much anticipated deployment of more troops to shore up the flagging UN-led peace keeping operation in Sierra Leone amid the rumoured death of Foday Sankoh, the leader of the rebel Revolutionary United Front.
Sankoh disappeared from his Freetown residence last Monday after his bodyguards fired into a thick crowd of Sierra Leoneans protesting the front's renewed atrocities against innocent citizens and the abduction of 500 UN peacekeepers.
African diplomats and defence experts in Lagos say it is unusual for the loquacious rebel leader to remain silent, fuelling speculations that he might have either sustained a fatal injury or even died during the gun battle.
Nigerian defence officials said they were trying to verify the report, which if confirmed, could alter the political equation in Sierra Leone, given Sankoh's critical position in the July 1999 Lome peace plan.
"It is wrong to wish anybody dead, but RUF leadership has constituted itself into an irritating stumbling block to peace in Sierra Leone," one African diplomat, who asked not to be named, declared.
Sankoh's rumoured death comes in the wake of reports from Freetown, where the Sierra Leonean Justice minister Solomon Barewa has accused the RUF leadership of illegal mining of diamond, and an alleged plot to topple the government of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah.
This is amid continued sporadic fighting between the rebel and government forces and the reported release of some 129 of the abducted blue berets.
The releases followed the intervention of Liberian President Charles Taylor, believed to have tremendous influence on the RUF leadership.
ECOWAS leaders at their emergency summit in Abuja last week mandated Taylor to use his good offices to negotiate the release of the hostages.
They also asked him to put pressure on the RUF leadership to respect the Lome peace accord, signed by all parties to the civil war.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian defence spokesman, Col. Godwin Ugbo, told PANA Monday that a UN request for more Nigerian troops in Sierra Leone would have to follow the "normal procedure."
This is a reference to the fact that this has to go from the presidency and to parliament for approval.
But Ugbo believes that given the urgency of the matter, the process could take "only a few days" to finalise, as soon as the issues of command and payment are sorted out.
Nigeria would want its national to command the troops it is sending, being the largest troops contributing nation, and the UN to pick up the bills.
In the meantime, a meeting of ECOWAS defence chiefs is slated for Abuja Wednesday, to decide on the community's military response to the deteriorating security situation in Sierra Leone.
Nigeria led the ECOWAS Peace Monitoring Group, ECOMOG, which pulled out of Sierra Leone two weeks ago, allowing the UN mission to take charge.
That development created the current security loophole, being exploited by the rebels.
In another development, security chiefs from Nigeria, Britain, and US met in Abuja Sunday, also on the Sierra Leonean situation.
American ambassador William Twaddel told reporters the meeting discussed "the respective responses to the current situation."
While Britain has sent hundreds of its paratroopers to Freetown, essentially to evacuate its citizens and those of the European Union and Commonwealth, the US has promised logistical support for ECOMOG's anticipated return mission to Sierra Leone.
ECOWAS officials further told PANA that a crucial summit of the three-nation Mano River group, involving Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia, was also expected to take place in Monrovia Monday on the security situation in the area.
The three countries have been directed by ECOWAS leaders to step up security patrols on their common borders to stem activities of dissidents.
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Copyright © 2000 Panafrican News Agency. All Rights Reserved.
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