Sierra Leone, 2001

My delegation

extends to you, Sir, its warmest congratulations on your

election to the presidency of this body at its fifty-sixth

session. Given your impressive credentials, we are

confident that under your guidance we will conclude

our deliberations successfully. I would like to take this

opportunity to express our appreciation to His

Excellency Mr. Harri Holkeri of Finland, who

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admirably conducted the affairs of the epoch-making

Millennium Assembly last year.

Let me also warmly congratulate our

indefatigable Secretary-General, Mr. Kofi Annan, on

his reappointment to a second term of office and on his

award, with the United Nations, of the 2001 Nobel

Prize for Peace. As citizens of the West African

subregion, we in Sierra Leone are proud of his

stewardship. Sierra Leone is indeed indebted to him,

the staff of the Secretariat and the United Nations

family for their invaluable support of our effort to

secure peace and stability in my country.

Forty years ago, on 29 September to be exact,

Sierra Leone was admitted as the one hundredth

Member of the United Nations. During the period that

followed, we made our own modest contribution to the

maintenance of international peace and security. We

have faithfully adhered to the purposes and principles

of the Charter. We have practised, and continue to

practise, tolerance and good-neighbourliness. Our faith

in the Organization remains as strong as it was 40 years

ago.

At the same time, the United Nations and its

agencies have done a lot for the people of Sierra

Leone. As President Kabbah told the Millennium

Summit last year, in the course of its membership,

Sierra Leone has tested the capacity of the United

Nations to respond to major challenges, especially in

the areas of peacekeeping, through the United Nations

Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL), and of

humanitarian law, through the proposed special court to

try those who bear the greatest responsibility for

serious violations of Sierra Leonean law, war crimes

and crimes against humanity committed in Sierra

Leone. In conveying our sincere thanks to the

Organization and the rest of the international

community for their support, my delegation expresses

the hope that Sierra Leone and the United Nations will

continue to work closely for peace, security and

sustainable development in the coming years.

Sadly, this session of the General Assembly is

taking place in the aftermath of the despicable acts of

terrorism inflicted on our host country on 11 September

2001 — acts that claimed the lives of thousands of

Americans and of the nationals of 86 other countries.

As we share their grief and renew our heartfelt

condolences to the families of the victims and the

Government of the United States, we Sierra Leoneans

are reminded of that ominous day in January 1999

when over 5,000 innocent civilians were brutally killed

during the rebel onslaught on our capital city. Hundreds

of others, including children and young girls, were

abducted or raped or had limbs deliberately amputated.

Terrorism in all its forms and manifestations is

deplorable and must be eradicated. My delegation

would like to assure this Assembly that we shall do

everything within our power and available resources to

support the current multilateral counter-terrorism effort

under the aegis of the United Nations.

The new emerging coalition to counteract the

scourge of terrorism is absolutely necessary. However,

the Sierra Leone delegation strongly believes that we

should also strengthen existing coalitions or build new

ones against those forces that continue to kill millions

of children and adults throughout the world every

single day. We know these forces. We know their

vicious and destructive powers. Hunger, poverty,

malnutrition, malaria, HIV/AIDS, brutality and

intolerance — these are but a few of them.

Sierra Leone calls upon this Assembly and the

entire international community to use the current

international solidarity against terrorism to translate the

Agenda for Peace, the Agenda for Development, the

Millennium Declaration, the Declaration and Plan of

Action of the World Summit for Children and similar

strategies and goals into a series of new coalitions: a

new coalition against childhood diseases; a new

coalition against poverty and human

underdevelopment; a new coalition against the scourge

of HIV/AIDS and malaria; and a brand new coalition

against the accumulation of nuclear weapons and other

weapons of mass destruction.

There has been a marked improvement in the

situation in Sierra Leone. The serious humanitarian

crisis still prevails, but is gradually subsiding.

Thousands of ex-combatants have been disarmed and

demobilized. Government authority and civil

administrative services are gradually being established

in areas previously occupied by rebels. Our

restructured army is now truly professional, thanks to

the intensive training programme directed by the

Government of the United Kingdom.

By all accounts, we can say that the overall

security and safety situation is one of great expectation.

In the coming months, the people of Sierra Leone will

once again start to enjoy to the fullest extent their basic

18

right to life — a life free from brutal armed rebellion

such as that provoked and abetted by external forces

and fuelled by blood diamonds for 10 long years. In

this connection, my delegation would like to express

our sincere gratitude to the United Nations and its

agencies, the Economic Community of West African

States (ECOWAS), UNAMSIL troop-contributing

countries, the United Kingdom and other friendly

nations for their individual and collective contributions

to the peace process in Sierra Leone.

Allow me from this rostrum to express the

condolences of the Government and people of Sierra

Leone for those brave and dedicated ambassadors of

peace from the United Kingdom, Zambia, the Ukraine

and Bulgaria who lost their lives in the recent

helicopter accidents in my country.

Despite our optimism for peace and stability in

Sierra Leone, past experience of adventurous attempts

by the rebels to renege on their obligations under peace

agreements have taught us a lesson: We have to remain

constantly vigilant. The safety and security of the

people will remain high on our national agenda, as will

the process of consolidating the peace through

sustainable development. This is why we would like

the United Nations, especially the Security Council, to

continue to generate the necessary international support

for our post-conflict and peace-building effort.

In this connection, we would like to draw the

attention of the international community and those who

assist us in the implementation of our disarmament,

demobilization and reintegration programme to the fact

that the disarmament and demobilization of ex-

combatants will soon come to a successful end.

However, the process of reintegration remains crucial.

We could lose the gains we have made in the peace

process if we allow the reintegration of ex-combatants

to collapse for lack of adequate funding. As President

Kabbah pointed out recently, we also have tens of

thousands of young people who have never seen,

touched or used an AK-47 rifle or a rocket-propelled

grenade. They, too, are waiting to be integrated into the

mainstream of our economic and social sectors.

On behalf of my Government, I would like to

appeal to the international community, as a matter of

urgency, to help us remove some of the root causes of

conflict by increasing support for our reintegration and

integration programmes for the benefit of youths. We

should no longer allow the legitimate social and

economic needs or grievances of these young people to

be exploited by ruthless warlords whose sole objective

is to drain our precious mineral resources for their own

selfish ends.

Speaking of diamonds, I would like to inform this

Assembly that our diamond certification system,

established under Security Council resolution 1306

(2000), has so far been a major success. First, there has

been a substantial increase in revenue from legitimate

diamonds since the system was established just over a

year ago. Secondly, it has also helped to reduce the

incidence of an old problem that preceded the

phenomenon of conflict or blood diamonds — namely,

smuggling. My Government is in the process of

updating the status of the certification system in its

third report to the Security Council through the

Committee that is monitoring the implementation of

resolution 1306 (2000).

The sacrifices we have made for peace in Sierra

Leone are not for Sierra Leoneans alone; they are also

in the interest of peace and stability in the Mano River

Union triangle in particular and the West African

subregion as a whole. The recent rapprochement at the

ministerial level, followed by meetings of the Joint

Security Committee and the initiative launched by the

Mano River Union Women Peace Network in the three

countries — Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone — augur

well for the proposed Mano River Union summit

meeting. Meanwhile, I can assure the Assembly that

President Kabbah remains committed to his

determination to help restore adherence to the principle

of good-neighbourliness in the Union. This should lead

to a revitalization of economic cooperation

programmes among the three countries. We must admit

that conflict and tension in the Union have had a

negative impact on the ability of ECOWAS to

concentrate on the principal objective for which it was

created, namely, economic cooperation and

development.

We are aware that primary responsibility for

alleviating poverty, stimulating economic growth and

reducing conflicts and their often disastrous

consequences lies in the hands of the developing

countries themselves. We are also aware that

development requires sound fiscal policies and rational

management of both our human and natural resources.

19

However, the international consensus is that

sustainable development also requires greater

cooperation between developing and developed

countries in such areas as trade, debt relief and external

financing. In this regard, Sierra Leone, one of the least

developed countries in the world, eagerly looks

forward to the results of the forthcoming Conference

on Financing for Development and the World Summit

on Sustainable Development.

There are many pressing and unresolved

problems on the international peace and security

agenda of the United Nations. One of them is the

situation in Palestine. It remains the core issue in the

search for peace in the Middle East. In our view, it also

breeds tension, and directly fans the flames of war in

other parts of the world. In the current state of affairs it

is no longer enough to speak about the right of the

Palestinian people to self-determination. They have a

right to an independent State of their own. In short, the

establishment of an independent Palestinian State is

well overdue. In terms of international peace and

security, we cannot afford any further delay.

Sierra Leone is obviously not a nuclear Power.

However, as a member of the human family, we are

concerned about the threat or use of nuclear weapons.

Indeed, we believe that these weapons pose the greatest

threat to human survival. Therefore, we shall continue

to support universal adherence to regional and

international disarmament and non-proliferation

instruments. For instance, Sierra Leone recently

ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty,

which we strongly believe is central to the question of

the vertical, or qualitative, proliferation of nuclear

weapons.

We are also seriously concerned about the

proliferation of conventional arms, including those that

have brought untold suffering to the people of Sierra

Leone during the past 10 years.

Last July, at the United Nations Conference on

the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in

All Its Aspects, we pleaded in vain for action to

prevent the transfer of these weapons to non-State

entities such as terrorists and rebels who commit

atrocities against innocent civilians. The recent

terrorist attacks and the awareness that biological

weapons in the hands of such non-State entities pose a

threat to us all should, in the view of my delegation,

prod those Member States that were unable to support

our plea last July to seriously reconsider their position

on this important issue of arms transfers to non-State

entities. We also need their full support in the

implementation of the Programme of Action adopted at

that important Conference.

In conclusion, my delegation is convinced that

the international community has at its disposal the

instruments, institutions, strategies, targets and road

maps for counteracting and eradicating terrorism, HIV/

AIDS, malaria, hunger, malnutrition and other deadly

forces, through closer multilateral cooperation.

Let the fifty-sixth session of this Assembly,

which was interrupted by the common enemy of

terrorism, go down in history as the new multilateral

cooperation session, one that should inspire all nations,

large and small, nuclear and non-nuclear, to deal

resolutely with the other common enemies of the

human race.