Global Policy Forum

Sierra Leonean rebels and loyalist militiamen eager to fill their pockets with diamonds are stalling a disarmament programme to end a brutal 10-year civil war, U.N. military officials have said.

The diamond fields in the east of the country have funded a decade of violence during which rebels and renegade soldiers chopped off the hands and feet of women and children.

Now they are all supposed to be disarming under a peace deal backed by the United Nations' biggest peacekeeping force, but fighters in some areas are delaying to pluck as many gems as possible from the rich earth, the sources said.

In the diamond town of Tongo Field, where disarmament is due to begin on Monday, a senior U.N. military official told visiting journalists on Saturday that political demands by local rebel commanders were a ploy to delay handing over control of the territory to government forces under the peace process.

"The fact of the matter is that the RUF (rebel Revolutionary United Front) in Tongo Field has carried out extensive illicit diamond mining and they are delaying the disarmament process," said the official, who declined to be identified.

U.N. military observer sources also said members of the pro-government Civil Defence Forces militia were disrupting disarmament at two diamond centres under their control, Joru and Panguma, in order to continue mining.

Over 35,000 civil war fighters, including nearly 4,000 children, have handed in their weapons so far this year and U.N. officials say the process should be completed during December.

But rebel commanders in Tongo Field have said they will not disarm until jailed RUF leader Foday Sankoh and other senior rebels are freed.

The whereabouts of Sankoh, jailed in May 2000 after his forces broke a peace deal and took hostage hundreds of peacekeepers, is a closely guarded secret. The government has been tight-lipped on what it intends to do with him until an international court is set up to hear war crimes charges.

U.N. peacekeepers said rebels in Tongo Field had also demanded confirmation of the RUF's registration for presidential and parliamentary elections in May as well as guarantees for their security once they disarmed.

Despite a series of spats the latest disarmament programme, based on a cease-fire agreed late last year, has gone further than any previous attempt to end the war, offering the former British colony its best chance in a decade for lasting peace.

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