Sierra Leone, 1997

It is indeed an honour once

again to address the General Assembly.

On behalf of the people of Sierra Leone, and on my

own behalf, I congratulate you, Sir, on your election to

preside over the work of this session, which you rightly

described as one that can mark the beginning of a new

era in United Nations history. Ukraine, a founding

Member of our Organization, is well known for its

decisive stand on unilateral nuclear disarmament. This in

itself is a major contribution to the promotion of

international peace and security. As an experienced

diplomat and former senior member of the Secretariat,

you are fully equipped to steer this session to a successful

conclusion.

I wish also to pay tribute to your predecessor,

Ambassador Razali Ismail of Malaysia, for the firm and

skilful manner in which he led the Assembly in dealing

with the issues of the fifty-first session.

We commend the Secretary-General for the bold

effort he has made so far in mapping out the tracks of his

quiet revolution, a reform of the Secretariat. This is

perhaps the first time in the history of the Organization

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that we have in the same session a President of the General

Assembly and a Secretary-General both of whom were staff

members of the United Nations Secretariat. I would like to

convey through the Secretary-General our appreciation to

the entire staff of the United Nations system, who have

been and continue to be pillars supporting the structures of

peace and economic and social well-being which our

Organization is building in various parts of the world.

When I addressed this body last year, I spoke at length

about my Government’s efforts to reach a peace agreement

with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), the settlement

of people displaced by the conflict and our efforts at

national reconciliation. I also spoke of our hopes: our hopes

for the consolidation of our new democracy, for the revival

of our economy and for the regeneration of communities

scarred by years of war. These were no starry-eyed

pronouncements. We were too well aware of the challenges

which the achievement of these objectives entailed, but we

were tackling them in a spirit of realism within the

framework of a united national effort and, above all, in

confident hope.

In the economic sphere, for example, the response was

promising. My Government was credited within a year with

the introduction of a social security scheme and a minimum

wage act; accountability and transparency in public

spending; trade liberalization and public enterprise reform,

including privatization; reduction of the rate of inflation

from 65 per cent to 6 per cent; achievement of a 5 per cent

economic growth rate, which had been minus 10 per cent

a year earlier; and plans for an investment code. These are

some of the signposts of confidence which national and

international investors saw when they concluded that Sierra

Leone was well on its way to economic recovery. Prospects

for that recovery were at their highest in more than two

decades.

Today I appear before you with a heavy heart. As I

speak, a great tragedy is unfolding in my country. On 25

May 1997, a combination of elements of the Sierra Leone

army and the Revolutionary United Front violently

overthrew my democratically elected Government and

unleashed on the country a reign of terror unprecedented in

its scope and ferocity. Overnight, Sierra Leone was

transformed into a gulag of horrors: the killing of

defenceless, innocent civilians, looting, confiscation of

property and rape. These atrocities continue. The people of

Sierra Leone have been ushered into a long night of

darkness. For the first time in our history, the survival of

our national society as a morally and socially cohesive

whole has been put into question.

It is against the background of these dramatically

changed conditions in my country that I appear before

you today, to make an appeal — a desperate appeal —

for help from the international community to save a

nation and a people. My presence on this podium

symbolizes the people of Sierra Leone stretching out their

hands to the United Nations, asking it to pull them back

from the brink of catastrophe.

The people of Sierra Leone are united in a common

fear, the fear that unless something is done, and done

now, the barbarism and adventurism of the military junta

will push the country over the brink. Their hope is that

the international community will not allow the military

junta to convert their country into one vast killing field.

If the prevailing situation is allowed to drift much longer,

because of a failure of political will, or for any other

reason, then the hopes of a peace-loving nation for a life

worthy of normal human beings will have been betrayed.

I am more than convinced that this cannot be what the

United Nations would like to see happen in Sierra Leone.

My belief in the United Nations, as the custodian of

world peace and security, and as the ultimate defence of

the weak and the defenceless, remains as strong as ever.

It is on the strength of this conviction, which has been a

part of all my adult life, that I bring the case of Sierra

Leone to the attention of the Assembly.

Only the speedy restoration of the democratically

elected Government of Sierra Leone can provide a lasting

solution to the crisis and enable the country to return to

normalcy and to resume its place as a responsible member

of the community of nations. This is no self-serving

statement. To insist on the restoration of my Government

is no more than to insist that the Government which the

people of Sierra Leone freely and openly elected in the

most closely invigilated election in the post-independence

history of the country be restored to them. Indeed, when

the Summit of the Organization of African Unity (OAU)

held in Harare considered the matter it resolved strongly

and unequivocally to condemn the coup d’état and called

for the immediate restoration of constitutional order in

Sierra Leone.

My Government emerged as a result of a transition

process under the their military regime of the National

Provisional Ruling Council. It was that regime which

appointed the Interim National Electoral Commission as

the management body responsible for the conduct of both

the parliamentary and presidential elections. At the

request of the Interior National Electoral Commission, the

Commonwealth secretariat in London provided three

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experts, including a legal draftsman, to help with the

preparations for the elections. None of these people had

been to Sierra Leone before and they knew nobody in the

country. The point of their attachment to the Interior

National Electoral Commission was to bring to bear on the

work of the Commission the highest international electoral

practices. The European Union also provided a voter

education expert from Britain, while the United Nations

supplied a logistical expert.

In other words, at the heart of the election

management body, the international community had a

presence to ensure the highest standard of probity and

transparency in the conduct of the elections.

In January 1996, in the middle of the preparations for

the elections, Brigadier Maada Bio forced Captain

Valentine Strasser out of office as Chairman of the National

Provisional Ruling Council and immediately launched a

campaign to postpone the elections. The banner of that

campaign was “Peace before Elections”. A national

consultative conference comprising representatives of

political parties, the army, the police, trade unions,

women’s organizations, the churches and mosques and

other organizations of civil society was convened in

February 1996 to pronounce on the matter. I should add

that in attendance were also representatives of the

international community. The overwhelming majority of the

delegates to the conference supported the holding of

elections. Incidentally, the Revolutionary United Front was

invited to participate in the democratic process. Clearly

illustrating its attitude towards legitimate democratic

principles and procedures, the Front categorically refused to

honour the invitation.

And so the elections were held on 26 and 27 February

1996. There were observers from the Commonwealth, the

Organization of African Unity (OAU), the African-

American Institute, the African-American Labor Center, the

Commonwealth Trade Union Council and the World

Council of Churches, all coordinated by no less a body than

the United Nations itself. At the close of polling, and long

before the official declaration of the results, the

international observers made a joint statement on 29

February 1996, in which they said that, despite setbacks,

they had witnessed a remarkably peaceful, orderly and

transparent conduct of the vote, which led them to conclude

“that the results will genuinely reflect the will of the

people of Sierra Leone and usher in an era of

democracy”.

Having failed to prevent the holding of the elections

through political manoeuvring, the anti-democratic forces

within the army and their Revolutionary United Front

allies launched a campaign of terror and intimidation in

those parts of the countryside where the rebels had a

presence to scare away people from voting. Many

innocent men and women had their hands cut off. Some

were branded with hot irons and many more were

mutilated in ways that I cannot describe in public. But no

intimidation could overcome the determination of the

people to put an end to military rule and all its associated

abuses.

The elections which brought my Government into

office were more than an electoral exercise to replace one

Government with another. They were no less than an

opportunity — indeed, a historic opportunity — for the

people of Sierra Leone to put an end to nearly 30 years

of undemocratic rule, the last four of which were an

outright military dictatorship.

In retrospect, the victories of the people, first against

the political sleight of hand to stop the elections, and then

against the campaign of terror and intimidation to scare

away the voters from the polling booths, seem to have

left the reactionary forces in our country with only one

remaining avenue to their objective, the unconstitutional

overthrow of any civil Government, and that was

precisely what happened on 25 May.

The people of Sierra Leone have responded to the

coup in a manner unique in the history of Africa.

Thousands of citizens, some out of fear for their lives and

other human rights violations, simply abandoned their

homes and their country, moved into neighbouring

countries, declaring they would rather live as refugees

outside Sierra Leone than stay under the rule of the illegal

junta. Those who stayed behind have refused to go to

work and have in various ways refused to cooperate with

the junta. This is the manifestation of the determination

of Sierra Leoneans never to surrender their hard-won

democracy.

The struggle under way in my country is between

the unarmed millions defending the cause of democracy

and the armed reactionary clique of mutinous soldiers and

their Revolutionary United Front cohorts. In embarking on

that perilous struggle, the people of Sierra Leone were

never in doubt as to where the sheer military advantage

lay. What continues to sustain the determined resistance

of the people and to fortify their courage is the belief, and

the expectation, that the international community cannot,

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and will not, let them down — indeed, the belief that,

whatever hardship they are facing at the moment, right will

ultimately triumph over might.

No one who has seen the reign of terror unleashed by

the regime on the defenceless citizenry or witnessed the

daily looting, rape and other brutalities which have now

become a way of life in Sierra Leone can mistake this for

peace. There is no peace in Sierra Leone. What is

happening is that the horrors which the RUF inflicted on

the rural communities — the killings, the amputation of

limbs, the looting, the arbitrary and illegal seizure of

private property of all kinds and many other crimes — have

now been generalized to encompass the urban centres as

well. To further compound their assault on innocent

civilians, the illegal junta has finally resorted to the laying

of anti-personnel landmines throughout the country, and

within the capital city itself. I need not spell out what a

horrific act this represents as far as innocent men, women

and children are concerned as they begin to fall victim to

these hidden devices.

This was precisely what my Government set out to

avert. In my inaugural statement as President, I made the

pursuit of peace and the end of the rebel war my most

urgent priority. Within a matter of days of assuming office,

I signed a communiqué at Yamoussoukro, in Côte d’Ivoire,

with the leader of the RUF, Corporal Foday Sankoh, in

which we effectively agreed upon a permanent ceasefire.

That agreement opened the way for substantive negotiations

between the Government and the RUF, culminating in the

Abidjan peace accord of 30 November 1996.

What my Government did not know was that the RUF

was negotiating in bad faith. We took the RUF at its word

and assumed that its professed commitment to peace was

genuine. The negotiations were protracted because the RUF

was adamant on certain issues. We conceded on those

particular issues with the hope that the RUF would honour

the resulting accord. This is, of course, not to suggest that

there were no doubters in our ranks who harboured

misgivings about the sincerity of the RUF. We had our

share of these doubting Thomases, but on the basis of our

peoples yearning for peace, we elected to be guided more

by our hopes and less by our fears.

After peace, national reconciliation was another central

plank of my Government’s policy. The pursuit of that

policy began with the very configuration of my

administration. My party had a substantial majority in

Parliament, and I myself had won the presidential elections

with a convincing majority. On the basis of the outcome of

the elections, therefore, I was under no obligation to

include in my Government people from other parties. But

I took a wider view of the matter and decided that if the

cause of national reconciliation was to be advanced it

would be desirable to have a broad-based Government.

Accordingly, I appointed the leader of one of the minority

parties to be my Minister of Finance, making him,

effectively, the third most senior member of the

Government. Other ministerial and senior positions were

filled by people drawn from other political parties. What

emerged as a result was a broad-based Government of

national unity in all but name.

The policy of national reconciliation was taken

further. The previous military regime, the National

Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) had confiscated the

properties of many senior Sierra Leoneans not on the

basis of law or due process, but on ad hoc commissions

of inquiry whose findings were not published and were

subject to no appeal. No one pretended that justice had

been done by the work of those commissions of inquiry.

Yet, on the basis of their findings, not only had many

people lost their properties, some of them had also been

disqualified from holding public office. If Sierra Leone’s

new democracy was to mean anything, this was a state of

affairs which could not be allowed to continue. I

appointed a National Commission for Reconciliation and

applied to the Commonwealth secretariat for a senior

Commonwealth judge to review the findings of the

commission of inquiry and to put right what had been put

wrong. I wanted a judge of suitable seniority and

distinction whose verdict would command respect. The

Commonwealth Secretary-General secured for me the

services of judge Ulric Cross of Trinidad and Tobago. He

was due to return to Sierra Leone to resume his

chairmanship of the National Commission for

Reconciliation when the coup took place.

Following the earlier coup of April 1992, which had

installed the NPRC military regime in power, many Sierra

Leoneans went into exile. They, too, had to be enabled to

come home in security and in dignity. Former President

Joseph Saidu Momoh had been living in exile in Guinea

since the coup of April 1992. My Government brought

him home and resettled him in a manner befitting a man

who had been our Head of State.

I have gone into this background in detail to show

what my Government did to end the war that had been

raging for the best part of five years, to achieve national

reconciliation and to usher in lasting peace. All this and

much else will be erased if the regime is allowed to

10

remain in power. The burning question before the world

community, therefore, is how best to bring a swift end to

the ruinous regime of the military and to enable Sierra

Leone to rejoin the mainstream of human society.

Some people with the best of intentions but with little

knowledge of the situation have called for negotiations to

end the tragedy unfolding in Sierra Leone.I have been

involved in negotiations of one kind or another throughout

my career. In fact, in a sense negotiating is second nature

to me. Accordingly, I have no problems with the principle

of negotiation. But it would be utterly disingenuous of me

not to state the serious reservations I hold about negotiating

with the junta.

In the first place, the junta is an unstable coalition. On

the surface it presents itself as a government in which every

member shares collective responsibility for decisions jointly

taken. In reality it is nothing of the kind. There is nothing

collective about the junta except the determination of its

constituent parts to hang on to power. For now the RUF

may be allied with some elements of the army, but there is

no pretence that they are motivated by the same long-term

objectives. The RUF is not the army, and it is certainly not

under the command of the mutinous faction of the Army.

The RUF has a separate and independent command

structure, and it takes its instructions from its own high

command. Therefore, based on our experience, in any

putative negotiations with the RUF it can be expected to

come to the table with its own set of demands. The

decision of one part of the unstable coalition will not, by

any stretch of the imagination, bind the other. Indeed,

precisely because they have separate and quite possibly

conflicting objectives there is hardly any prospect of

negotiating with anything like a unified position.

In the second place, the RUF is undoubtedly the

faction with the upper hand within the junta. The RUF’s

principal objective all along has been to take and keep

power by all means, including terror and murder. In its

present configuration, the RUF has no coherent programme

to speak of. Rather than yield power peacefully, the RUF

has threatened to launch a scorched-earth campaign to

reduce the country to ashes. Its position is that if it cannot

rule Sierra Leone, nobody else should.

And if none of these points is convincing, we have

only to look at the way in which the junta has handled the

negotiations with the Committee of four Foreign Ministers

of the Economic Community of West African States

(ECOWAS). The three-point ECOWAS formula for the

resolution of the Sierra Leone crisis entailed, in order,

“the early reinstatement of the legitimate

Government of President Tejan Kabbah, the return

of peace and security and the resolution of the issues

of refugees and displaced persons”.

This was the basis on which the regime entered into

negotiations with the ECOWAS Committee of four. The

third meeting between the Committee and representatives

of the regime in Abidjan took place on 30 July 1997. It

was expected to be a breakthrough meeting. However,

while it was in progress, the leader of the junta made a

radio and television broadcast in which he stated clearly

that his regime was determined to remain in power for a

minimum of four years. His statement was intended to

wreck the talks, and that was exactly what it did. He has

not retracted his determination to stay in power for four

years.

If, in spite of the illegal junta’s record of bad faith,

the international community insists that we must take the

path of negotiations, then I suggest that such negotiations

should be held between the junta and the Committee of

ECOWAS Foreign Ministers, whose membership has now

been increased to five. And for those negotiations to be

meaningful, they must proceed on the basis of clear

understandings. In the first place, if the negotiations are

resumed, the three-point ECOWAS negotiating agenda

must remain the agenda of such negotiations. Then they

must be time-bound. If they are open-ended, the regime

can be expected to filibuster and to spin them out

indefinitely in the hope that it will achieve a creeping de

facto recognition by the international community.

Then, the junta’s delegation must always be led by

the junta leader himself. The Committee of five should

insist on no less, because if the regime’s delegation is led

by anyone else, the scope for subsequent repudiation and

double-dealing will become infinite. Finally, to ensure

that the regime treats the negotiations with the seriousness

they deserve, existing international pressures and

measures must not only be maintained but further

strengthened. In that way the genuineness of the regime’s

declared intention to negotiate will be tested.

When all this is done and an agreement is reached,

we will still have to face the task of achieving genuine

and total national reconciliation. What Sierra Leone needs

today more than anything else is peace and reconciliation.

I have never lost sight of this need, and it is the one

objective which has influenced every step that I have

taken since assuming office in March 1996. The events of

25 May have only further deepened those divisions within

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our society which my policies had begun to heal. As a

result, the adoption of a more vigorous policy of national

reconciliation has become an absolute necessity.

It would not be exaggerating the case to say that the

brand of political persuasion practised by the military-RUF

coalition borders on systematic genocide. Since 25 May

1997, whole villages, entire communities and targeted

families have been wholly or partially decimated in the

eastern, northern and southern provinces of Sierra Leone,

in Moyamba, Bonthe, Sanda, Bumpe, Kumrabai,

Foredugu — the list is endless.

That is why many Sierra Leoneans strongly believe

that a war crimes tribunal should be appointed to try all

those who had a hand in the making of our tragedy. I

understand the feelings behind this demand, but I reject it.

l reject it because it will add to our already grave problems

and postpone lasting national reconciliation.

Throughout this address I have tried to draw a

distinction between elements of the army in complicity with

the head of the junta and the bulk of the army, who are

basically decent men and women and loyal to the best

traditions of the Sierra Leone army. Even so, I do not

believe that any worthwhile national purpose will be served

by a policy of reprisals against the misguided elements of

the army and others in the junta’s camp.

We seek no more from the United Nations than the

assurance of 6 August 1997 contained in the statement

made by the President of the Security Council:

“The Security Council will, in the absence of a

satisfactory response from the military junta, be ready

to take appropriate measures with the objective of

restoring the democratically elected Government of

President Kabbah.” (S/PRST/1997/42, p. 1)

At the same time, we are asking the Security Council

to assist ECOWAS and the ECOWAS Monitoring Group

(ECOMOG) in giving practical effect to that objective. By

doing so, the Council will not only be saving the lives of

the people of Sierra Leone, but will also be averting an

escalation of the crisis which now threatens peace and

security in our subregion. And here I should like to take

this opportunity to express, on behalf of my Government

and the people of Sierra Leone, our sincere appreciation to

the Heads of State and the Committee of Foreign Ministers

of ECOWAS for their efforts over the past four months in

pursuit of their objective, which the Security Council

supports.

Once the objective of restoring the democratically

elected Government is achieved, my Government will, in

the same spirit of reconciliation which had guided its

policies since the 1996 elections, consider, in an

appropriate forum, the serious question of security and

full implementation of the Abidjan Peace Agreement.

Security is paramount. Without security, no meaningful

humanitarian assistance can reach the people of Sierra

Leone.

Notwithstanding the acts of bad faith initiated by the

RUF to derail the peace process and despite the

dangerous coalition which had emerged since the 25 May

coup, my Government, the legal Government of Sierra

Leone, is committed to the Agreement. We are also

committed to the Secretary-General’s plan and

recommendations, submitted to the Security Council last

January, for the establishment and maintenance of a

peacekeeping operation in Sierra Leone in connection

with the implementation of the Abidjan Peace Agreement.

We are ready to reactivate my Government’s agenda

for reconciliation, resettlement of refugees and displaced

persons, and rehabilitation and reconstruction which the

military-RUF junta so ruthlessly disrupted almost five

months ago. We owe it to our people to continue the

transformation of our economy from emergency relief

programmes to realistic projects for medium- and long-

term self-sufficiency. Of course, we know that this is not

going to be easy. However, we are confident that the

immediate and unconditional restoration of my

Government, the Government elected by the people,

constitutes the first step towards that transformation.