--- Received from WPS.RYARL 223-5923 10-18-99 322p
Albright to meet victims of
Sierra Leone war at start of Africa tour
October 16, 1999 Web posted at: 1:13 PM EDT (1713 GMT)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S.Secretary of State Madeleine Albright comes
face to face Monday with the grim legacy of the eight-year war in
Sierra Leone when she visits a camp housing some of the conflict's
victims. It is the first stop on her six-country tour of Africa.
That legacy can be seen in countless lost fingers, hands, lips and
ears, which reflect the RUF rebel movement's fascination for
mutilation. Some victims were as young as 3 or 4 years old.
For Albright, the stop in Sierra Leone easily will be the most
difficult of her weeklong tour. She also will visit Guinea, Mali,
Nigeria, Tanzania and Kenya.
It hardly is a coincidence that bloody African civil wars have
broken out in Sierra Leone, Congo and Angola: Each boasts a rich
reserve of diamonds that rebels have exploited to finance their
quest for power.
The secretary of state will encourage both sides in Sierra Leone
to abide by terms of a peace agreement negotiated three months
ago. One meeting is planned with RUF leaders who oversaw the
brutality. Susan Rice, Albright's top aide for African affairs,
said the meeting is necessary because peace in Sierra Leone will
be impossible if the insurgents are ignored.
When the RUF, the acronym for Revolutionary United Front, took up
arms eight years ago, they had just a few hundred men. But as they
tapped diamond mines in areas under their control, the ensuing
windfall reached $100 million to $150 million annually, and the
number of combatants soon rose to 10,000 to 15,000, according to
U.S. estimates. The diamond trade enabled the RUF to buy weapons
as well as influence.
The consequences were catastrophic for the West African nation, a
former British colony. U.S. officials say almost half the
population of 4.6 million has been uprooted from their homes --
and these are the lucky ones. Thousands more have been killed or
maimed in RUF attacks. As U.S. officials see it, the diamond
trade tends to prolong conflicts in Sierra Leone and elsewhere on
the continent. The struggle for justice becomes a struggle to
maintain an economic enterprise, officials say.
In Sierra Leone's case, diamonds often are transferred to
neighboring Liberia, then flown to Europe. Much of the RUF's
output ends up in shops in the United States, officials say.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, thousands of Zimbabwean
troops protect rich diamond areas in the southwestern part of the
country from encroachment by rebel forces fighting the government
of President Laurent Kabila. Part of the diamond haul is used to
pay the Zimbabwe military for its protection.
Instability has kept eastern Congo in turmoil recently because the
armies of both Rwanda and Uganda have been drawn there by diamond
deposits. The competition has produced outbreaks of fighting.
Profits from diamonds also have enabled Angola's UNITA rebel
movement, a Cold War ally of the United States, to persist in its
24-year civil war.
UNITA has been able to flout an effort by the United Nations to
force a peace settlement through economic sanctions. According to
U.N. estimates, UNITA has earned $4 billion from diamond sales
since the sanctions took effect in 1993.
David Newsom, a former deputy secretary of state, points out that
not only are diamonds valuable, but they are often easy to
transport and hide.
Newsom said he was told of a Lebanese diamond merchant in Angola
who moved from place to place with a pet boa constrictor, "which
conveniently swallowed and disgorged diamonds on demand."
A U.S. official who monitors Africa's conflicts says the
administration hopes to get an international movement under way to
distinguish between the "clean" diamond trade, involving countries
such as Botswana, Nigeria, Australia and Russia, and the "dirty"
one that feeds Africa's conflicts. The latter trade is estimated
to account for 30 to 40 percent of African production.
Any such movement would require the cooperation of the De Beers
diamond conglomerate, which controls about 70 percent of the
world's rough diamond sales. A U.N. committee headed by Robert
Fowler, a Canadian, is looking for ways to crack down on illicit
UNITA diamond and arms trading.
Copyright 1999 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten, or
redistributed.
---- 10-18-99 322p ---- Sent to ---------------------------
-> [log in to unmask]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, visit:
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/aam.html
AAM Website: http://www.danenet.wicip.org/aam
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
