If
ECOWAS
Sends 1000
Ivorian Troops
to Mali,
Screening for
Duekoue?
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
April 28 -- As
ECOWAS moves
to send 3000
soldiers to
Mali,
it's reported
that up to
1000 of them
will be from
Cote d'Ivoire,
whose Alassane
Ouattara is
heading up
ECOWAS.
Less
than a year
ago,
Ouattara's
fighters
supported by
the French
Force Licorne
and
the UN
captured and
then sent
former Ivorian
President
Laurent Gbagbo
to the
International
Criminal Court
in The Hague.
But
during that
fight and
subsequent
process, there
was talk of an
investigation
of
and
accountability
for massacres
including that
at Duekoue,
which is
attributed to
pro-Ouattara
(and pro
Guillaume
Soro)
fighters.
So
what
safeguards
are in place
that
individuals
and commanders
involved and
implicated
in Duekoue are
not sent as
supposed
peacekeepers
to Mali?
Already
at the UN,
Secretary
General Ban
Ki-moon has
accepted
without
protest as one
of
his Senior
Advisers on
Peacekeeping a
Sri
Lankan
commander,
Shavendra
Silva, whose
58th Division
is depicted in
Ban's own
report as
engaged
in war crimes
-- recently upgraded
to include the
use of cluster
bombs,
which Inner
City Press
asked the UN
about on April
27, so far
without
response.
Nor
has the UN
responded to a
request
earlier in the
week by Inner
City Press
that
it describe
what screening
is done of
peacekeepers
before they
are
deployed
across
borders,
compared even
to UN
Volunteers and
particularly
in light of
the UN's
essentially
proved
introduction
of
cholera to
Haiti?
We
will have more
on all these
questions --
and the
planned
deployment and
threatened
sanctions on
Guinea Bissau
-- in the
coming days.
Watch this
site.
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