Secretary General Kofi Annan authorized a war crimes tribunal today to be set up in Sierra Leone despite a big shortfall in financial pledges from the member nations of the United Nations. Mr. Annan said a United Nations planning mission would go to Sierra Leone on Monday to start the process of arranging headquarters for the special court, hiring local staff members and beginning investigations.
The tribunal's task would be to prosecute about 20 people accused of being ringleaders of the West African nation's decade-long civil war, which appears to be winding down. In 2000, the Security Council voted to set up the tribunal to try people charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes and other serious violations of international law.
Sierra Leone's representative at the United Nations, Allieu Ibrahim Kanu, said the court could be ready to begin trying cases in about a year. The war pitted government forces and militias against rebels of the Revolutionary United Front who seized control of the country's diamond-mining areas and became notorious for hacking off the limbs of women and children, and for enlisting thousands of child soldiers in their cause. The rebels fueled the fighting by selling diamonds they mined for arms. But after a disarmament agreement was reached in May, the United Nations deployed its biggest peacekeeping operation across the country and collected the weapons of more than 40,000 fighters.
The United Nations mission would remain in the country through Jan. 18 and culminate in the signing of an agreement between the United Nations and Sierra Leone establishing a legal framework for the tribunal's operations, Mr. Annan said in a letter to the Security Council. While United Nations members have donated nearly enough money to finance the first year of the tribunal's operations, pledges for its second and third years have fallen well short of the amounts required, Mr. Annan reported. So the United Nations may have to request extra payments from members to make up any shortfalls, he said. The world body has already slashed the court's budget to $57 million from an original estimate of $114 million for three years because of problems raising the funds.
Source: New York Times
