The Government, along with the EU and UN, would continue to support diplomatic efforts aimed at consolidating a lasting peaceful resolution of the conflict in Sierra Leone, the House was told. "We will also continue to provide appropriate humanitarian relief to the vulnerable civilian population and to seek improved humanitarian access," the Minister of State for Agriculture and Food, Mr Noel Davern, assured members.
The Minister was responding on behalf of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, to a Fine Gael motion urging the Government and its EU partners to play an active role in peace consolidation and reconstruction in the war-torn African state. The motion, which noted that peace appeared to be imminent in Sierra Leone following an eight-year civil war that had claimed tens of thousands of lives and had resulted in the displacement of 1.2 million people, called on Mr Andrews to outline the role he envisaged for Ireland in helping to restore peace.
Mr Davern said that as part of our continuing bilateral support for early peace in Sierra Leone, Ireland had been represented at the second meeting of the Sierra Leone contact group in New York last April, which had been attended by representatives of 22 countries, the UN, ECOWAS and the European Commission. The meeting, in seeking to sustain momentum towards a peaceful settlement, recognised that the Abidjan Accord of 1996 remained a valid framework for a negotiated settlement.
The overall humanitarian situation remained dire. The UN estimated that nearly half, or 2.6 million, of the population in the northern and eastern provinces was effectively inaccessible to humanitarian agencies due to insecurity, added Mr Davern.
In response to the continuing crisis, Irish Aid had this year provided £200,000 in emergency humanitarian assistance.
Moving his party's motion, the Fine Gael leader in the House, Mr Maurice Manning, said Sierra Leone was small enough and rich enough in resources to be rebuilt. He believed the Government had a role to play in this regard. Sierra Leone, he said, should be given priority status by the Department of Foreign Affairs which would enable focused and effective assistance to be given. With our new prosperity we could well afford to take on another country for such help. Ireland should also contribute personnel to the newly-formed and recently deployed UN peace monitoring unit in Sierra Leone.
Mr Michael Lanigan (FF) complained that in Sierra Leone, as in other African countries, there was a substructure of society which was UN-orientated and UN-driven. This substructure was driven by people who were well paid and were invariably white.