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AC Vol 42 No 22 www.africa-confidential.com 9 November 2001 Vol 42 No 22 AFRICA CONFIDENTIAL LIBERIA 2 LIBERIA Flag-waving A new UN Report shows how Old habits die hard Liberia’s maritime commissioner, A damning new UN report accuses Charles Taylor’s regime of Benoni Urey, authorised payments keeping ties with the RUF and busting sanctions for a sanctions-busting operation through San Air in Dubai. Against all tradition, President Charles Taylor has turned taciturn. He and his advisors have made almost no denial of or other reaction to a long list of serious and well-documented allegations in the United Nations Panel of Experts’ Report on Liberia, published on 26 October(1). The Report revealed that the SOUTH AFRICA 3 government was still getting weapons, that it had not expelled Sierra Leone’s rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF, AC Vol 42 No 16) and that some of its officials had violated the UN travel ban. It also showed Short-pants to no- some progress on cleaning up abuse of the Liberian aviation registry and suggested that the ban on pants diamond exports might be lifted if Monrovia introduced a ‘credible and verifiable’ system of certificates The former apartheid party, the of origin. Taylor’s Spokesman Reginald Goodridge restricted himself to a searing condemnation of a New National Party, is heading for Washington Post article linking Taylor and the RUF’s diamond mining operations in rebel-held Sierra oblivion after some of its members Leone to Al Qaida. Apart from being a ‘preposterous’ tale, the Post article was a crude attempt to swing broke with its alliance partner, the the UN sanctions debate against Liberia, Goodridge insisted. Democratic Party. Foreign Minister Moni Captan has kept public comment to a minimum through his sanctions task force, which includes Defence Minister Daniel Chea, Minister of Lands, Mines and Energy Jenkins Dunbar and the Governor of the Central Bank, Mohamed Selebi. Only the emotional Commissioner NIGERIA 4 of Maritime Affairs, Benoni Urey, has broken ranks. That’s unsurprising as Urey comes in for the heaviest lambasting in the Report. And he’s also tried to deflect many of the rebukes about his running Unknown soldiers of the maritime agency onto the Finance Minister, Milton Nathaniel Barnes, who we hear may be sacked When Nigerian soldiers on suspicion of cooperating too enthusiastically with the UN investigators. slaughtered more than 200 Tiv civilians in Benue State last month, Blood logs and conflict cruises they delivered another blow to the Obasanjo government’s credibility. Captan hopes that silence will help the government not to rock the boat while the UN Security Council They may have also split the army: deliberates the Report’s two most dangerous new recommendations – extending sanctions to include the bulk of rank and file soldiers exports of round logs and placing the maritime funds in an escrow account. The Security Council will are Tiv. take at least a month to reach a decision. Britain, the United States and France (formerly supportive of Taylor) all wholeheartedly endorsed the Report. But the likelihood is that Tunisia’s and Mali’s KENYA 5 opposition to new sanctions on the Taylor regime will be enough to defeat the Report’s recommendations, at least until the entire sanctions package is considered again next May. It’s better abroad The government is keen to improve its relations with the USA. President Taylor has offered Liberian airspace to the US-led ‘coalition against terrorism’ and his Anti-Terrorist Unit (ATU, much criticised by President Moi was among the first African leaders to back the US war Amnesty International) to fight in Afghanistan. Since the official ban on access to Lofa was lifted in against terror. He has also helped September, US Ambassador Bismarck Myrick has toured the county and is being keenly wooed. The on intelligence matters and is trying USA has disbursed some US$10 million in emergency aid in Liberia this year. to foster peace talks in high-risk The UN Report shows in detail how weapons have been shipped illegally to Liberia from Kyrgyzstan, neighbouring Sudan and Somalia. Slovakia and Ukraine. Additional shipments from Slovakia and Moldova were halted at the last moment. The weapons were sold on the basis of false end-user certificates, mostly claiming to be from CHAD 6 Guinea (AC Vol 42 No 2). UN insiders say the Experts’ Report on Liberia is the ‘strongest yet’, carefully researched to show how sanctions are broken – from sources of funds to delivery of weapons – and backed Desert fox by volumes of documents. Its immediate UN predecessor, by the Angolan Monitoring Mechanism, President Déby’s arbitrary rule resulted in widespread censure and speculation among UN diplomats that the ‘name and shame’ era worries regional allies and foreign introduced by Canadian Ambassador Robert Fowler (now heading G8 talks with the New African investors, especially ExxonMobil, Initiative) was over. which is working on the Doba oil The non-governmental organisations Global Witness and Partnership Africa Canada, plus the pipeline project. International Federation of Transport Workers, have complained about the Liberia Report not promoting their specific goals of, respectively, all-out timber sanctions, underemphasising diamonds and closing POINTERS 8 down the Liberian maritime registry (see Box). Unusually for such a UN panel, two of the experts came from NGO backgrounds, Johan Peleman and Alex Vines. Somalia, Namibia, The Security Council is very unlikely to agree to tougher measures against Liberia. The UN is reluctant CAR & USA/Africa to do anything that might have a direct humanitarian impact and Secretary General Kofi Annan has grown 9 November 2001 Africa Confidential Vol 42 No 22 Flag-waving, gun-running, all the conveniences Despite all its domestic troubles, Liberia is host to the world’s second- payments to Ruprah. The UN Experts’ Panel obtained copies of largest maritime open-registry, better known as a flag of convenience. cheques, bank statements and bank transfer details totalling several Until 1994, when it was overtaken by Panama, Liberia’s flag flew million US dollars. over the world’s largest fleet, as measured by tonnage. Between 1949 The UN Report concluded that Urey and his Maritime Affairs (when it was established) and 1999, the registry remitted around Bureau ‘are little more than a cash extraction operation and cover US$700 million to the Liberian government. Last year, it had 1,734 from which to fund and organize opaque off-budget expenditures vessels under registration, many of them tankers, and generated some including for sanction-busting’. It recommended that the maritime $18 mn. for Monrovia. funds be put in an escrow account. The registry is not in fact Liberian but American, protected for The UN’s meticulous exposure frightened a few ship-owners. several decades by the US authorities. Since January 2000, it has been Anxious about its image and ‘blood holidays’, Royal Caribbean run by the Liberia International Shipping and Corporate Registry, a US Cruises this week moved all but one of its ships from under the firm which employs many former US Coast Guard inspectors and is Liberian flag. The Registry’s old enemy, the London-based headed by Yoram Cohen, an Israeli. There has always been curiosity International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), smells blood; about what happens to the money. The UN Experts’ Report concentrated trades unions have few members on ships sailing under flags of on that part of it remitted to the Monrovia government. convenience and the ITF is calling on ship-owners to haul down They documented how, in 2000 and early 2001, Liberia’s Liberia’s. Rival registries, especially those of Panama and the Commissioner for Maritime Affairs, Benoni Urey, authorised payments Bahamas, are keen to pick up registrations; Belize is offering a from maritime funds for a sanctions-busting operation through San Air favourable transfer deal. in the United Arab Emirates, a company linked to the McDonald’s of Benoni Urey maintains his innocence. He claims the equipment sanctions-busting, Victor Bout. (Bout services his Antonov planes in was for humanitarian operations in Lofa County, where his government Bulawayo, Zimbabwe; until a few months ago he was leasing them to is fighting a war against, he says, ‘Islamic fundamentalists’. He noted the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, now he finds it much more that ‘it is our right to decide what we do with our money’ and that lucrative to lease to the US-backed Northern Alliance). opposition groups were ‘comfortable’ with the handling of money An associate of Bout’s, Kenyan-born Sanjivan Ruprah, helped from national shipping operations. Urey has often moved money and Benoni Urey and his brother Leroy to set up a ghost-airline, West made payments for President Charles Taylor. By failing to cooperate Africa Air Service (WAAS) to supply weapons and military equipment with the UN investigators, while leaving such an obvious paper chase, in contravention of UN sanctions. San Air received two types of direct he may have killed the goose that laid the golden egg. It remains to payments: once by a direct transfer from the Bureau of Maritime be seen if he stays at the Maritime Affairs Bureau or devotes himself Affairs in Monrovia and numerous times up to January 2001 through full-time to his farming, telecommunications and diamond businesses. extremely cautious about sanctions. The UN Office for Coordination process, which has loosened some traders’ ties to Monrovia. The UN of Humanitarian Assistance made a superficial assessment of the has encouraged the change. Its Mission in Sierra Leone (Unamsil) impact of sanctions, based almost entirely on Monrovia’s figures; it turns a blind eye to the RUF’s diamond-mining in Kono and the was welcomed by Tunisia and China as part of their diplomatic Freetown government welcomes the extra tax revenue from diamonds manoeuvres to end sanctions on Iraq.
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