U.N. Clamps Arms Ban on Liberia

The Security Council imposed an embargo Wednesday on Liberia’s trade in weapons and diamonds in an effort to halt the country’s arms-for-gems support for rebels in neighboring Sierra Leone.

The weapons ban is an extension of an embargo put in place in 1992 during Liberia’s civil war. Other sanctions will not go into effect for two months to give Liberia a chance to prove that it has stopped backing the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front in their effort to topple the government of Sierra Leone.

The RUF has terrorized Sierra Leone’s population by raping, killing and chopping off the hands and limbs of thousands of civilians in its quest to wrest control of the country and its diamond mines. In May, RUF soldiers took about 500 U.N. peacekeepers hostage and stole their guns, violating a peace accord and reviving the West African country’s now decade-long conflict. Since that incident, which highlighted the inability of the U.N. and neighboring countries to stop the fighting, the U.N. has been trying to reassert control, if not restore peace, in the region.

The new sanctions include a travel ban for Liberian President Charles Taylor and other senior officials and the grounding of all Liberian-registered aircraft to deter smuggling. A U.N.-commissioned panel found in December that Taylor’s government had been delivering planeloads of arms to Sierra Leone in exchange for diamonds, as well as providing the rebels with training, a staging ground for attacks and a haven for retreat.

Taylor has denied the charges but promised to expel all rebel soldiers from Liberia. He also said he has grounded all aircraft. In another effort to head off the U.N. sanctions, Liberia on Tuesday banned diamond exports for 120 days while it sets up a diamond certification program.

“President Taylor has said he wants to turn over a new leaf,” said Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s ambassador to the U.N. “The Security Council is willing to wait two months to see some action. Everyone in the region recognizes that Liberia has to put its house in order.”

The resolution is an example of the United Nations’ new strategy of “smart sanctions” that target illicit trade and officials’ travel rather than imposing broad economic restrictions that tend to hurt civilians. The sanctions require periodic review, after 14 months for the arms ban and after 12 months for the diamond and travel embargoes.

The Security Council imposed a ban on diamond exports from Sierra Leone in July. The so-called blood diamonds that finance the fighting in West Africa represent an estimated 4% of a global $7-billion market, according to the World Diamond Council.

Because diamonds are easy to smuggle and difficult to track, the council has been experimenting with a system employing tamper-proof containers, counterfeit-proof documentation and electronic record-keeping to track shipments of stones from the time they are mined through the processing phase. This system is now being tested on a small scale, using exports from government-controlled parts of Sierra Leone to processing centers in Antwerp, Belgium.