§ Lord Actonasked Her Majesty's Government:
How they will use the £10 million-worth of new assistance for Sierra Leone which was announced on 2 March; and what is their policy with regard to arms sales to Sierra Leone. [HL1799]
§ Baroness Symons of Vernham DeanThe Foreign Secretary announced on 2 March a new UK commitment of £10 million to promote stability in Sierra Leone. The objectives are to help the West African Peacekeeping Force, ECOMOG, push back the rebels, to encourage the rebels to lay down their arms and return to civilian life; and to create a professional and democratically accountable Sierra Leone Army.
Access to this new £10 million package of assistance is conditional upon matching pledges of support from other international donors. I am pleased to report that we have now received the full amount of £10 million in matching donations as a response to our lead in the promotion of lasting peace in Sierra Leone.
Our new package of £10 million will be used as follows:
we have already given substantial logistic support to ECOMOG to enable it to consolidate the security situation. We have decided that £5 million will now be made available to provide further equipment for ECOMOG. Deliveries of equipment for ECOMOG will be arriving shortly;
£4.5 million will be used to fund a UK programme to train and equip a new Sierra Leone Army. A small UK military advisory team has been deployed to oversee basic training of the new Sierra Leone Army and to assess its longer term training requirements. As part of this train and equip programme, we will be providing boots and uniforms. We will also be providing rifles and ammunition. We will be delivering this equipment shortly.
As a condition for proceeding with this programme we have sought and secured assurances from President Kabbah that he will pursue a twin track—diplomatic and military—approach to obtaining a lasting political peace; that recruitment for the new Sierra Leone Army will take place without ethnic discrimination; that children will not be used by the Sierra Leone Armed Forces or the Civil Defence Force; and that equipment supplied by the UK to the Government of Sierra Leone will be used only in accordance with international human rights standards and international humanitarian law.
39WAPresident Kabbah is also in the process of consulting ECOWAS to ensure that the supply of arms by the UK does not breach the ECOWAS small arms moratorium of October 1998.
UN Security Council Resolution 1171 prohibits the sale or supply of arms and related material to Sierra Leone, other than to the Government of Sierra Leone through named points of entry. There is also an 40WA exemption to allow the sale of arms for the sole use in Sierra Leone of ECOMOG or the United Nations. The United Nations Arms Embargo (Amendment) (Sierra Leone) Order 1998 implements the United Nations Arms Embargo on Sierra Leone in the UK. Applications for licences under the Order in Council relating to the sale or supply of arms and related matériel to the Government of Sierra Leone or ECOMOG or the UN are considered on a case by case basis.