The News Review:

- Annan seeks extension for UN mission in Sierra Leone.
- Ghanaian peacekeepers end mission in Sierra Leone.
- BBC NEWS | Programmes | Panorama | Meet the team | Steve Bradshaw
- Liberia : Where the arms come from
- Former leader warned
- Caught in his shadow

Annan seeks extension for UN mission in Sierra Leone.
Free with registration – Asia Africa Intelligence Wire – AccessMyLibrary.com – Sep 17, 2003
Annan seeks extension for UN mission in Sierra Leone. (17-SEP-03) Asia Africa Intelligence Wire.

Ghanaian peacekeepers end mission in Sierra Leone.
Free with registration – Asia Africa Intelligence Wire – AccessMyLibrary.com – Sep 17, 2003
Ghanaian peacekeepers end mission in Sierra Leone. (17-SEP-03) Asia Africa Intelligence Wire.

BBC NEWS | Programmes | Panorama | Meet the team | Steve Bradshaw
BBC News – Sep 17, 2003
In the Seventies he was a rock music DJ, and he claims to be the first person to play Bruce Springsteen on British radio. First scoop

Steve was one of the original reporting teams of Radio One’s Newsbeat, BBC 2′s Newsnight and Radio Four’s File on Four. He has made close to 100 radio and TV documentaries from more than 40 countries, including Rhodesia, Lebanon, Rwanda, Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone, and Bosnia. These have included some 50 stories for Panorama over three decades. His most recent Panoramas have caused a worldwide controversy, including two programmes investigating the Catholic church’s claims that condoms do not prevent Aids. He also recently investigated unfair trade rules and America’s neoconservatives and the case against war in Iraq. His first scoop as a journalist was getting former PM Jim Callaghan to consider whether it could be OK to break the law over labour rights.

Liberia : Where the arms come from
International Herald Tribune – Sep 17, 2003
The Liberian government is under UN sanctions, but counted on regional allies such as Burkina Faso to help cover up its illegal arms imports. Regular night flights to Monrovia's Robertsfield International Airport continued through early August. The LURD and MODEL rebels profit from the regional and international antipathy to Charles Taylor, who fomented instability and human rights abuses across West Africa and earned an indictment on war crimes in Sierra Leone before being forced into exile in Nigeria last month. Taylor's militias regularly recruited children, tortured, raped and summarily executed civilians in Liberia. The West African intervention has brought some stability to Monrovia, but the regional force remains too small to deploy outside the capital in significant numbers. Meanwhile, all three warring parties — the government militias, LURD and MODEL — have continued to rape, loot and displace civilians in the rural areas. This despite Taylor's departure and arrangements for an interim government to take power in Monrovia next month.

Former leader warned
Topeka Capital Journal – Sep 17, 2003
Taylor, a former warlord who launched Liberia into 14 years of conflict in 1989, resigned the presidency on Aug. 11 under pressure from international leaders and from rebels laying siege to his capital. Nigeria agreed to grant asylum to Taylor, who is sought by a U. -Liberia war-crimes court for his support of a vicious rebel movement in the West African nation of Sierra Leone. Nigeria opened three villas in the southern jungle town of Calabar for Taylor, his family, and entourage. European Union officials told The Associated Press earlier this month that Taylor remained in daily telephone contact with President Moses Blah, his successor, and others in Liberia.

Caught in his shadow
Guardian Unlimited – Sep 17, 2003
He cannot plausibly take on a hostile electorate and try to make them love the euro, not any time soon. “You never know,” say the most senior Blairites enigmatically, but not without a smile. Or, to strain credulity, what if Blair suddenly saw a need to make another foreign intervention? What if he genuinely believed Iranian WMDs endangered Britons’ security? Alternatively, an urgent, humanitarian case might arise, another Sierra Leone or Kosovo. Blair has dispatched troops six times in four years, but could he do it again now? After Iraq, and the lack of public consent that that war enjoyed, is the option of military force still available to this prime minister? The PM has the sharpest political instincts; he surely knows there is a problem. The way Downing Street sees it, it’s midterm and these are just the kind of sticky patches governments get into: it only feels so shocking and so new to Labour because Labour has never governed this long before. Yes, people wonder if they were told the truth on Iraq: the best the prime minister can do is persuade them that what he did was right and that he did it for the right reasons. If those pesky WMDs came to light, that would help.