With fighting apparently having subsided, the head of UN peacekeeping headed for Sierra Leone yesterday to boost the morale of UN forces and join political talks underway on hundreds of soldiers taken hostage,
At least 300 UN peacekeepers from India, Kenya, Nigeria and Zambia have been taken hostage by the rebel Revolutionary United Front and another 200 Zambian soldiers are missing in the interior of the country.
Mr Bernard Miyet, the under-secretary-general for peacekeeping, was expected to arrive in the Sierra Leone capital of Freetown tomorrow a UN spokesman said. Rebels, who were advancing towards Freetown, were nowhere in sight yesterday.
In addition to the hostages, UN officials reported that of the four Kenyan soldiers missing and presumed dead, two have turned up alive in the bush. But one Kenyan soldier has been confirmed dead while the fourth is still missing.
The 15-member UN Security Council received a briefing on the crisis yesterday in a special closed-door consultation but issued no statement.
Britain is sending troops and warships to West Africa to help its citizens who may need to evacuate Sierra Leone. The force, to be based in Dakar, Senegal, includes 700-800 members of a paratroop battalion.
Some diplomats said Britain might consider a rapid reaction force to rescue the peacekeepers, and were keeping troops in Senegal on standby. But Britain and the US had declined previously to participate in such a force.
The envoys, however, said the UN wanted Britain, the former colonial power, to send 200 military personnel to guard the main airport at Lungi as well as UN headquarters.
Yesterday Brig Gen Mohammed Garba, the UN deputy force commander, travelled by helicopter with some journalists to a series of towns in the interior about 80 kms northeast of the town of Lunsar. The spokesman said there was no fighting nor signs of violence.
The rebels had moved towards Freetown on Saturday after hearing reports their leader, Mr Foday Sankoh, was under house arrest following the presence of UN soldiers who surrounded his home in Freetown.
But they stopped in Masiaka, about 60 kms from Freetown after exchanges of fire on Saturday with Nigerian UN soldiers in the crossroads town of Rogberi, east of Masiaka. There were no reports of fighting yesterday. Confusion abounded late on Saturday when UN military headquarters in Freetown said the rebels were moving toward the capital, using human shields, after fighting with UN peacekeepers in the interior. But later the United Nations said the rebels were not as close to Freetown as they had thought.
"There was a failure of communications link with the UN troops in Masiaka as well as Hastings, leading the United Nations to assume the RUF had overrun both places and were on the outskirts of Freetown," the spokesman said. Hastings is only 20 km from the city centre.
Why the peacekeepers were taken as hostages is unclear. The immediate spark was a dispute over some RUF members turning over their weapons to a UN camp as they are required to do under last summer's peace agreement.