Report: Guinea Violated U.N. Arms Embargo to Supply Arms to Liberian Rebels

TBO ^ | 11/5/03 | Todd Pitman

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) - The West African nation of Guinea violated a U.N. arms embargo to supply weapons to Liberian rebels, who "indiscriminately" shelled residential areas and the U.S. Embassy in their final assault on Liberia's capital this summer, a leading human rights group said Wednesday. New York-based Human Rights Watch called for a suspension of U.S. and other foreign military assistance to Guinea, which it said was still reportedly supplying arms to the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy rebel group.

In the Guinean capital, Conakry, foreign ministry spokesman Aboubacar Cisse said his government had not seen the report, and so could not yet comment on it. In Liberia, a top LURD official, Sekou Fofana, described the rights group's accusations as "baseless and untrue."

The United Nations slapped an international arms embargo on Liberia in March 2001 to punish former President Charles Taylor's government for trading weapons for diamonds with neighboring Sierra Leone's brutal rebels.

The U.N. Security Council, of which Guinea is currently a member, is due Thursday to review the sanctions on Liberia, which are in force until May.

"It's appalling that Guinea, a current member of the Security Council, has flouted the arms embargo on Liberia," said Lisa Misol, arms researcher with Human Rights Watch. "The Security Council must hold Guinea accountable for this major breach."

The rebels took up arms against Taylor in 1999 and bore down on the capital, Monrovia, from June to early August.

Fighting then left at least 1,000 civilians dead. One mortar round exploded in a U.S. Embassy residential compound where some 10,000 terrified Liberians had taken refuge, killing more than two dozen civilians. Another shell hit the embassy's commissary building across the street.

The rebel siege ended with a cease-fire that paved the way for an international peacekeeping force and sent Taylor into exile in Nigeria. Businessman Gyude Bryant became head of a new transitional government on Oct. 14, but sporadic fighting continues in the countryside.

Human Rights Watch said the rebels' offensive "was possible only because fresh arms supplies arrived through Guinea," whose defense ministry "ordered mortars and other ammunition from Iran and arranged their onward transport to LURD."

The U.S. government also had traced some of the mortar rounds to Guinea, which is a recipient of U.S. military aid, the rights group said.

All sides, including a second, smaller rebel group, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia, were able to obtain weapons despite the arms embargo, "often with the help of regional allies," Human Rights Watch said.

Guinea, as well as neighboring Ivory Coast, were long thought to be backing both rebel groups.

On Saturday, U.N. peacekeepers announced the contents of a 40-foot-long shipping container seized at Liberia's airport in the waning days of Taylor's embattled rule: 22 tons of illegal mortars, rockets, guns and bullets.

Taylor loyalists acknowledge they were forced to purchase arms on the black market - at much higher prices than the arms rebels were receiving through Guinea.

Fofana, LURD's deputy secretary-general, declined to say where the rebels had obtained their arms, saying only that "guerrillas have different ways of finding weapons to fight."

"The Liberia example shows that arms embargoes are only as good as their enforcement," Misol said. "Liberia's fragile peace depends on a reinvigorated response to sanctions-busting on all sides."

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

Would you call this a Guinea fowl?