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UNHCR Chief Sells Safe Passage Proposal To Defuse Border Crisis
ABIDJAN, Feb 17 (News Agencies) - U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers, on tour in west Africa to resolve a gigantic refugee crisis, has won approval for proposed safe corridors to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people trapped by fighting.
Lubbers, who is visiting Africa for the first time since taking over as head of the United Nations refugee agency in January, visited the three concerned countries - Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia - from last Sunday to Thursday.
He received the backing of the respective presidents - Lansana Conte, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah et Charles Taylor - who said they would cooperate in solving the world's worst refugee crisis in southern Guinea.
Guinea is currently home to some 300,000 Sierra Leonean refugees and 120,000 Liberian refugees.
Some 140,000 Sierra Leonean refugees and around 70,000 Guineans are still cut off in a volatile border region known as the Parrot's Beak - where Guinean territory forms an enclave inside Sierra Leone near the border with Liberia.
Tens of thousands of local people have been displaced, with villages razed and crops left unharvested.
The former Dutch prime minister also established indirect contacts with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a Sierra Leonean opposition group, who indicated they would not stand in the way of the return of refugees through a corridor in the country's north.
Liberian President Charles Taylor, viewed by many in the troubled region as a major cause of the turmoil due to his old links with the RUF, has pledged his support to the task of relocating refugees.
"We condemn any group or individual that is opposed to free access or movement of refugees and I believe and agree that we ought to give refugees very serious priority," he said.
Taylor's meeting with Lubbers, a "strange coincidence," according to Lubbers who made the remarks in front of the Liberian leader - came as the United Nations Security Council discussed further sanctions on Monrovia.
The Security Council is considering turning an arms embargo on Liberia into tougher sanctions on the basis of a U.N. report that Taylor trades arms for diamonds with the RUF, who hold territory where the stones are mined and have pushed into Guinea.
Since September, RUF armed incursions into Guinea from Sierra Leone have multiplied and led to bloody conflicts with the Guinean army, especially in the region of Gueckedou.
The UNHCR no longer has access to this zone. The number of refugees is difficult to ascertain but it easily surpasses 200,000.
Lubbers had visited the camp of Katama, north of Gueckedou, where some 20,000 refugees came on foot while fleeing from conflict.
About 140,000 other refugees are trapped west of Gueckedou in a strip of land that borders Sierra Leone. Taylor had proposed to open his territory to these refugees.
Having received the backing of Guinean authorities and the army to assure the security of refugees, Lubbers was yet to receive similar assurances from the RUF.
"I am not a pessimist," he said, adding that he had nothing against having the RUF as an ally.
"There is spillover to Guinea. I don't like this spillover because it affects 'my' refugees, so I'd better contact RUF directly," he said.
For his part, the Sierra Leonean president has suggested that refugees from the strip could directly enter his country.
This would mean the deployment of troops along 70 kilometers of opposition territory - a move backed by the ambassadors of France and Germany during a meeting with Lubbers in Conakry.
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