Global Policy Forum

By Irwin Arieff

U.N. peacekeepers have made good progress stabilizing Liberia after years of war but the country needs more international help to rebuild its shattered economy and create jobs, U.N. officials said on Wednesday. A year after the peacekeeping mission's launch, 14,665 U.N. troops and 1,090 U.N. police officers have been deployed across the country and Liberia is calm, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a report to the Security Council. But without economic recovery, "the prospects for sustaining the peace process in the long term will remain very fragile," Annan said.

While wealthy nations pledged $520 million in aid for Liberia in February, they have so far delivered $244 million of that, despite a pressing need to find jobs for former soldiers, strengthen law enforcement institutions and prepare for October 2005 elections, the U.N. leader said. "Liberia needs a massive infusion of foreign capital," said Jacques Klein, the U.N. special envoy for Liberia. "There is still no electricity, no sewage system, the transportation grid is broken," Klein told reporters after briefing the council on Annan's report. "We are talking hundreds of millions of dollars."

Liberia, a nation of 3.5 million people founded by freed American slaves, was devastated by 14 years of on-and-off civil war, which came to a close in August 2003 when President Charles Taylor went into exile in Nigeria. Taylor's departure cleared the way for a peace deal with anti-government rebels, the installation of a new interim government and the peacekeeping mission.

U.N. sanctions on Liberia remain in place, however. The Security Council banned diamond and timber exports and arms purchases after accusing Taylor of fueling conflict in the region through an illicit guns-for-diamonds trade. While the interim government has pleaded for the sanctions to be lifted, Klein said the local authorities were not yet able to ensure that money from timber and diamond sales would not again be used to buy illicit arms or line the pockets of corrupt politicians.

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