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UN Secretary-General Appoints New Panel of Experts for Liberia

FrontPageAfrica (Monrovia)
NEWS
January 27, 2006
Posted to the web January 27, 2006

By John Walsh
Monrovia
The United Nation's Secretary-General Kofi Annan has appointed a five-member
Panel of Experts to monitor renewed sanctions imposed on Liberia by the UN
Security Council after receiving reports that the country's natural resources
were not being used to benefit its people.
The Panel of Experts who were appointed Wednesday, 25 January 2006 include
Arthur Gregory Blundell of Canada, who serves as the chairman, Damien Callamand
of France, Caspar Fithen of the United Kingdom, Tommy Garnett of Sierra Leone,
and Rajiva Bhushan Sinha of India. The five experts have appropriate expertise
on arms, timber, diamonds, finance and humanitarian and socio-economic issues.
They will serve for a period of six months until 21 June 2006, Dr. Annan
informed the Security Council in a letter.
The Council re-established the Panel of Experts to conduct follow-up
assessments of the sanctions and noted that the experts would review the
measures, with the view to ending them, at the request of President Ellen
Johnson Sirleaf's new government.
In December 2005, the Security Council renewed sanctions it had imposed on
Liberia in May 2001 which now include timber, travel, arms and diamond
embargos.
The Security Council has mandated the new Liberian Government to implement
reform especially in the management of the country's timber and diamond
resources.
It welcomed the determination of President Sirleaf to meet its conditions and
has encouraged her Government to implement reforms, especially the management
of the country's timber and diamond resources.
Sanctions were originally imposed on the Liberia in 2003 after determining that
exiled former Liberian President Charles Taylor's Government was assisting the
rebel Revolutionary United front (RUF) in Sierra Leone fight against the
Government of that country during that country's brutal ten-year civil war.
At the time in 2003, citing Liberia's "active support" of rebel groups which
were having a destabilizing effect on the sub-region, the Security Council
renewed and expanded the sanctions, and decided the measures would remain in
effect until peace was maintained, export transparency was established and the
Government controlled the national forest.
The last Panel of Experts appointed last July to assess the implementation and
impact of the sanctions regime in Liberia reiterated that the requirements for
lifting the embargo on Liberian rough diamonds and timber had not been met.
The former National Transitional Government of Liberia which reached agreements
on iron ore exports proved that Liberians could not rely on their Government or
on the international community to protect their interests. The Security Council
said it needed transparent business negotiations.

   

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