The News Review:

- Sierra Leone’s child soldier project at risk
- Liberia ‘basically destroyed’, says UN envoy
- Mortar Attack Kills Dozens in Liberia

Sierra Leone’s child soldier project at risk
Independent Online – Jul 25, 2003
The United Nations children’s agency said that unless it receives $1,4-million immediately it will be forced to halt an education programme that is helping 7 000 former fighters in Sierra Leone. UNICEF chief Carol Bellamy said that ending the program would mean “breaking the promise of peace for these children”. Sierra Leone’s child soldiers – the youngest of whom is only six years old – left the battlefields when combatants in the country’s savage civil war started turning in their guns in 2001 after almost a decade of conflict. UNICEF and other organisations continued to help them re-adjust after their return home, offering them a chance to catch up with their studies or to learn a trade.
Related: Army Doubles Support Funds For Soldier, Families

Liberia ‘basically destroyed’, says UN envoy
Ireland Online – Jul 25, 2003
?The country is basically destroyed,? Klein said. ?The problems we?re going to have are the funding issues. We?re using UNAMSIL funding, that is the mission in Sierra Leone. There?s no mandate to do this, but we?re going to do it anyhow. ?UN secretary-general Kofi Annan has recommended that the 13,000-strong UN peacekeeping force in Sierra Leone withdraw by December 2004… There?s no mandate to do this, but we?re going to do it anyhow. ?UN secretary-general Kofi Annan has recommended that the 13,000-strong UN peacekeeping force in Sierra Leone withdraw by December 2004. Klein said borrowing resources from the Sierra Leone operation to help Liberia would create another set of problems, but that Annan felt he had little choice. Klein said it would take the Nigerians ?at least seven to ten days? to arrive in Liberia. ?I?m pleased that there will be one battalion on the ground to at least show that there?s some mature parties out there willing to engage and take this seriously while people are dying of cholera, dysentery dehydration,? he said. After Klein?s briefing, the Security Council urged the rebels ?to immediately stop its indiscriminate shelling of Monrovia? and for both sides to commit themselves to a peace agreement. UN Ambassador Inocencio Arias, the current Security Council president, said the council hoped the international community would support the West African peacekeeping force and urged Taylor to leave Liberia as he had promised.
Related: Just blogging from MOM & Daughter

Mortar Attack Kills Dozens in Liberia
FOXNews – Jul 25, 2003
foxnws%2Fredirs_all. But he has repeatedly hedged on promises since June to cede power. In Sierra Leone, a lawyer for Taylor filed a motion Wednesday challenging the jurisdiction of the court.