PRESS BRIEFING ON SECURITY COUNCIL WEST AFRICA MISSION

press briefing on Security Council west africamission

Representatives of 14 Security Council member States would be leaving Sunday for a seven-nation mission to West Africa, Emyr Jones Parry, Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom and head of the mission, told correspondents at a Headquarters press briefing this afternoon.

The mission will include Mourad Benmehidi (Algeria), Ismael Abraão Gaspar Martins (Angola), Joël W. Adechi (Benin), Irene Vida Gala (Brazil), Ignacio Llanos (Chile), Jiang Jiang (China), Jean-Marc de La Sablière (France), Stefan Delfs (Germany), Sohail Mahmood (Pakistan), Patrick A. Chuasoto (Philippines), Marius Ioan Dragolea (Romania), Ana Jiménez (Spain) and Sichan Siv (United States).  They will visit Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and Nigeria from 20 to 29 June.

Dumisani S. Kumalo (South Africa), Chairman of the Economic and Social Council’s Ad Hoc Advisory Group on Guinea-Bissau, will join the Council’s mission in that country.

The mission was being undertaken as the Security Council spent approximately 50 to 60 per cent of its time on African issues, explained the United Kingdom representative, and because West Africa currently occupied much of that time.  Directly observing the three active peacekeeping operations in the region was among the mission’s priorities. 

Others included working with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to sustain the regional organization’s efforts in West Africa, examining how the aggregate efforts of the United Nations family were delivered on the ground and, above all, discussing the regional dimension of each nation’s political situation with its leadership, he concluded.

Asked to elaborate upon the specific purposes of the Council’s mission in a number of countries, he affirmed that the primary objective in Nigeria would be to conduct a dialogue with President Olusegun Obasanjo.  However, there was no question of meeting with former Liberian President Charles Taylor, he stated, adding that the Security Council’s view on the need to bring Mr. Taylor to justice was fairly clear.

In Côte d’Ivoire, the Council would convey a fairly tough message on the need for all parties to live up to their responsibilities and to keep the national reconciliation process on track, he said.  It was also hoped that a meeting with all the signatories to the Linas Marcoussis agreement could be arranged.  In Liberia, helping the Transitional Government to meet the criteria for lifting the sanctions imposed by the Security Council would be major subject of discussion.

Regionally, he reiterated, the mission would focus upon raising awareness of all United Nations activities on the ground -- not just peacekeeping -- and the benefits accrued thereby.  It would also stress the need for coherent policy-making across the region, to ensure that the removal of a problem in one country did not translate into its arrival in another. The threat such narrow policy-making posed had been amply demonstrated in Liberia under Charles Taylor, who had acted as a contagion on Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire.

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