Bryant puts off war tribunal

2004-03-05 09:22

Monrovia - Liberia will not even consider a war crimes tribunal until the mandate of its transitional government ends in January 2006 with the election of a new president, interim chairman Gyude Bryant has said.

Bryant said that the mandate of the transitional government installed last October was too short and too narrowly-defined to undertake the creation of a war crimes tribunal similar to the one that is to take up work on March 10 in neighbouring Sierra Leone.

Fourteen years of nearly relentless war in the Atlantic coastal state ended in August last year with the flight into exile of former president Charles Taylor.

A peace pact, signed in the Ghanaian capital Accra, declared a general amnesty for all acts committed before the agreement was signed and mandated the creation of a South African-styled Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Bryant had been reluctant to begin the TRC process, believing that the disarmament and rehabilitation of Liberia's 50 000 combatants was more of a priority, but he now said his administration was drawing up the terms of engagement for the commission.

Observers say that Bryant was under pressure from international donors, who in February pledged $520m for Liberia's reconstruction to hasten the reconciliation process.

"We have to uphold those principles we agreed to and resolved," Bryant said of the TRC and the blanket amnesty, which specifically excludes those acts considered war crimes or crimes against humanity.

"Anything other than that we cannot support," he said, firmly ruling out the possibility that a war crimes court would be convened in Liberia before 2006.

None of my business

"What happens after this government is none of my business."

Taylor, a warlord who was elected president in 1997 at the end of his own seven-year rebellion, faces charges of crimes against humanity at the UN-backed tribunal in Sierra Leone for his alleged role in arming and training the notorious Revolutionary United Front (RUF) during a decade-long civil war there.

In his Nigerian exile, he has been beyond the clutches of UN prosecutors and an Interpol arrest warrant.

Bryant expressed confidence that the economic sanctions imposed on Liberia in May 2001 for its alleged support of the RUF would be lifted in the "near future."

He said a sanctions review committee that has been in Liberia all week was there to confirm to the UN Security Council that the reasons for imposing sanctions no longer existed.

"We have become a non-aggression state, a non-exporter of diamonds and logs that fuel conflict in the region," said Bryant, a businessman appointed last October to lead Liberia to elections in 2005.

"The near future looks pretty good" for lifting the sanctions, he said, adding he was "absolutely" sure that Liberia would be free to trade in timber, minerals and rubber before the end of his mandate in January 2006.

- AFP