July 8, 1999
Dakar - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said that the United Nations was ready to send observers to the Democratic Republic of the Congo as soon as heads of state signed a peace deal and that peacekeepers could follow quickly. African defence and foreign ministers, meeting in Lusaka yesterday, endorsed a draft ceasefire document to end the war in the former Zaire, reports Reuters.
''As soon as an agreement is signed we will deploy observers, perhaps as many as 500 men and women,'' Annan told mediapersons here yesterday. ''We will send afterwards a peacekeeping force. It may take three months but it can be earlier than that if the African countries help us,'' he said without elaborating.
Annan was also asked about an amnesty for fighters in the civil war in Sierra Leone - a provision in a peace deal for the West African country signed in the Togolese capital Lome yesterday. UN Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson has said a blanket amnesty would be unacceptable given killings and mutilations blamed on rebel forces.
Replying to a question, Annan, who was due to visit Sierra Leone for several hours today, said the offer of amnesty regarding atrocities committed during the conflict was not binding on the international community. He did not elaborate. Chilean former dictator Augusto Pinochet's arrest in Britain last year on torture charges is the most prominent case of suspects taken into custody abroad for alleged human rights abuses in their own country.
