PRESS CONFERENCE BY PANEL OF EXPERTS ON LIBERIA SANCTIONS

PRESS CONFERENCE BY PANEL OF EXPERTS ON LIBERIA SANCTIONS

The Panel of Experts on Liberia Sanctions briefed correspondents this afternoon at Headquarters on its most recent report, which it will present today to the Security Council.

Three of four panel experts participated in the press conference.  They were:  Harjit Sigh Sandhu of India, from Interpol; Johan Peleman of Belgium, an expert on arms and transportation; and Atabou Bodian of Senegal, from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).  The fourth expert, Alex Vines of the United Kingdom, an expert on diamonds, was not present.

The expert panel was re-established by the Security Council on 27 February for a further period of five weeks.  The panel was re-established to conduct a follow-up assessment mission to Liberia and neighbouring countries, in order to investigate and compile a brief independent audit on compliance by the Liberian Government to Security Council resolution 1343 (2001), on sanctions against Liberia.

The report, made available to correspondents, reviews arms and air transportation, diamonds and certification schemes, other sources of revenue and government expenditure, and the travel ban.  A concluding section concerns the impact of sanctions on Liberia, and discusses media and civil society anti-sanctions campaigns, as well as the “collateral damage” to the economy.

At the outset of the press conference, a correspondent asked about the origins of the arms and whether, as in the case of Sierra Leone and Angola, many of the arms were coming from former Warsaw Pact countries.  Mr. Sandhu said the panel had given five specific case studies in its previous report.  In its latest report, the panel only mentioned the plane crash of 15 February, where there was no direct evidence that weapons had been transported.  However, there was “too much of overwhelming circumstantial evidence” that there had been weapons and ammunitions on that flight.

Mr. Peleman said the verifiable evidence the panel had on the weapons that were currently in the region was two-fold.  The problem of uncontrolled arms flows in the sub-region was constant and had been going on for a longer time.  There also remained the more serious problem of small quantities of arms that were sold or bartered across the border or from one force to another.  People were not loyal to the forces they joined because of the proliferation of arms and non-State actors.  The trade in arms at that level was a result of opportunism, hunger and poverty.

The sources of weapons, he added, remained the same.  The Kalashnikov was still the weapon of choice in the sub-region, although there could be many sources for that particular type of weapon, because it was being made in many countries under the original license from the Russian design.

He said that based on eyewitness accounts, many of the weapons were clearly old ones.  However, the panel saw new arms being carried, especially by the elite units in Liberia.  In that context, he noted that the security detail of Liberian President Charles Taylor’s son, who headed the anti-terrorist unit in Monrovia, carried brand new automatic weapons  -- along the lines of the “mini Uzi”.

Mr. Peleman said, “The overwhelming majority is former eastern European-designed arms.  But there are also G-3s, FN rifles, some rifles which are of Israeli design.  So there is a great quantity of different types of weapons, but the Kalashnikov remains the weapon of choice.”

Clarifying the perception that the panel’s report was also recommending that its own investigation be looked in to, Mr. Sandhu and Mr. Peleman explained that the Panel was requesting that the Government of Liberia be asked to provide details on the plane crash and that the report should be independently investigated.

Mr. Sandhu said the panel had asked for a broadening of the existing Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) moratorium on small arms to make into an information exchange and transparent mechanism on all types of weapons being supplied to the sub-region.  As a confidence-building measure, he said it was important that the different member States of West Africa know what the build-up was in terms of each other’s weapons.

Additionally, he said, for the Manu River Union countries (Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia) where the situation remained very fragile, the panel was recommending -- not an embargo -- but that States abstain from supplying weapons to the sub-region.

In response to another question, both Mr. Sandhu and Mr. Peleman agreed that it was now time for the Security Council to adopt a new resolution with respect to the region in light of the changed circumstances on the ground.  The current situation called for a resolution reflective of the new and changed realities on the ground.

“We still think that the situation in Liberia poses a threat to the stability in the subregion, or a risk at least.  However, given the positive peace process in Sierra Leone, we think that this new reality should be reflected,”

Mr. Peleman said.

Asked who the main suppliers of weapons in the sub-region were and how they were financed, Mr. Peleman said both the current report and the previous one have shown that most of the suppliers were private brokers that operated on a global level.  But the prototype operation consisted of arms being supplied from mostly east European or central Asian countries with the use of false flight plans, fraudulent certificates for aircraft, registration numbers and insurance for those aircraft.  The financing of those operations was mostly done through the maritime in Liberia, he said.

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