Sierra Leone forces moving on rebel position, officials say

Sunday, May 21, 2000 | 1:50 a.m.

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone - Pro-government forces were advancing toward a rebel-held town that would position them to make a push against a key rebel stronghold, officials said Sunday.

The pro-government forces, including members of the army, former junta soldiers and militiamen composed of traditional hunters known as the Kamajors, were fighting their way toward Lunsar, 50 miles northeast of Sierra Leone's capital Freetown, said two top military officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

They declined to give further details, and their account could not be independently confirmed.

From Lunsar, the military would be well-placed to launch an attack on the central city of Makeni, an important rebel stronghold.

Over the past 10 days, government forces have been slowly pushing the rebels back from the Freetown area and out of a number of other important towns.

The counterattack followed a rebel offensive that brought them to within 40 miles of Freetown, part of a resurgence in Sierra Leone's civil conflict that has also seen the rebels seize hundreds of U.N. peacekeepers.

The rebels have not launched any major attacks in recent days, and it was not clear who has been leading them since rebel chief Foday Sankoh was seized on Wednesday.

President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah is seeking to push ahead with a peace accord signed last year. However, the rebels remain well-armed at their jungle bases, and are still holding 334 U.N. peacekeepers. The rebels have demanded Sankoh's release and have given no indication that they are willing to disarm.

The guerrillas have not linked Sankoh's release to the freedom of the U.N. captives. However, they seized 500 U.N. peacekeepers at the beginning of the month, and had been freeing them in groups, a process that halted after Sankoh was taken into custody.

Asked if Sankoh might be released in a bid to end Sierra Leone's renewed conflict, Information Minister Julius Spencer said Saturday, "it's out of the question. It's not possible."

The U.N. contingent now numbers 10,400, the largest U.N. peacekeeping deployment in the world, and has been authorized to grow to 13,000.

Meanwhile, U.S. envoy Jesse Jackson denounced the "terror tactics" of the rebels and called on them to release the peacekeepers immediately.

"The RUF must disarm voluntarily, and immediately, or be made to disarm involuntarily," Jackson said Saturday at a news conference in neighboring Liberia.

Jackson, acting as President Clinton's special envoy, is touring West Africa in a bid to calm tensions in Sierra Leone and win the freedom of the peacekeepers.

Jackson said Saturday that he had not yet decided whether he would go to Sierra Leone. He was traveling to Mali and Guinea over the weekend.

Sankoh, widely reviled for his role in the country's brutal civil war, was captured as he walked toward his Freetown home - which he had fled May 8 when his fighters fired on a crowd of demonstrators, killing 19.

The government has said it is investigating the shooting, and has not yet decided what to do with the rebel chief.