The News Review:

- Criminal court set up for Sierra Leone civil war trials
- Global security firms fill in as private armies
- Euro-army ‘some way off’

Criminal court set up for Sierra Leone civil war trials
abc.net.au – Mar 28, 2004
The United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone will try those who bear the greatest responsibility for atrocities committed during Sierra Leone’s brutal civil war. The court is the centre-piece of efforts to deliver justice, after more than a decade of conflict. But, as our Africa correspondent Sally Sara reports, it’s struggling to meet the expectations of Sierra Leoneans. (Sound of marching drums)SALLY SARA: It’s Sunday afternoon in Freetown, and children are marching through the streets as part of a Thanksgiving parade.

Global security firms fill in as private armies
San Francisco Chronicle – Mar 28, 2004
They point to successes such as Angola, where the South African firm Executive Outcomes deployed 500 soldiers, fighter planes and attack helicopters to save the country’s army from defeat by 50,000 UNITA rebels. The firm was paid $40 million per year from 1993 to 1995. In Sierra Leone in 1995 and 1996, Executive Outcomes was paid $1. 5 million a month to defeat the 10,000 rebels of the Revolutionary United Front. “The reality now is that you will have four to seven new U. missions authorized this year, and the United Nations just doesn’t have the people to do it,” said Douglas Brooks, president of the International Peace Operations Association, a Washington lobbying group of the largest security firms.

Euro-army ‘some way off’
BBC News – Mar 28, 2004
We are now in a, now in the position where I think it is a sustainable position with our current deployments. DAVID FROST: So in fact, he’s right when he says we couldn’t take on a major one – as you’re saying like Iraq – GENERAL JACKSON: Without redistribution, yeah. DAVID FROST: – without redistribution – but we could take on another Sierra Leone or something like that. GENERAL JACKSON: Oh indeed. DAVID FROST: A smaller operation. GENERAL JACKSON: A smaller operation is do-able. DAVID FROST: Because in fact the thought of you having to say no is rather – I mean take one example, Tony Blair said that if anything happened in Rwanda the world would, would go back in and get active in that if there was a danger of loss of, lots of loss of life and so on there, but I mean the thought of someone ringing you and you saying I’m sorry old boy, I’ve got to say no, that would be a very difficult thing to do.