Diamonds Fuel Civil War in Sierra Leone
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Western African leaders are meeting in Nigeria today to consider sending more troops to Sierra Leone. The African forces would back a United Nations mission that is struggling to enforce a shattered peace in the war-torn nation. CNN's Ben Wedeman looks at the precious resource that is fueling Sierra Leone's civil war.</s>BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The work is hard and tedious, the payoff modest at best. At this diamond field outside the government controlled town of Boe (ph), miners find maybe one, possibly two diamonds a week. The pay is miserable, $0.10 a day plus a cup and a half of rice. The profits are reaped by others far removed from this hot humid jungle. A precious resource that has helped make some countries rich, diamonds, says Sierra Leone's president, have been this country's curse.</s>PRES. AHMAD TEJAN KABBAH, SIERRA LEONE: Diamond is one of our problems in this country and the rebels have been stealing our diamonds together with other people from outside Sierra Leone, stealing our diamonds, buying arms and fueling the war.</s>WEDEMAN: As part of the agreement that was supposed to end the nine year civil war, rebel leader Foday Sanko (ph) demanded and was given the chairmanship of the state body that oversees diamond mining. With Sanko now in government custody and the war picking up again, the rebels are concentrating their forces in the diamond rich east.</s>JOHNNY PAUL KAROMA, COMMISSION FOR CONSOLIDATION OF PEACE: Those who are present in the mining areas, they should vacate those areas and hand them back to the government because that is what is fueling the war. If the government cannot get control of those areas, then the war will not end.</s>WEDEMAN: Ultimately, many people in Freetown accuse the president of neighboring Liberia, Charles Taylor, of supporting the rebels to gain control of Sierra Leone's diamonds, a charge he flatly denies. But his suspected involved in diamond smuggling is a constant source of tension between the two countries.</s>SAMUEL HINGA NORMAN, DEPUTY DEFENSE MINISTER: We are only saying that the people of Liberia should be very concerned about their nation and the action of their president. We are all the time asking them to consider that. We are trying to suppress the possibility of a confrontation between the two countries.</s>WEDEMAN (on camera): Diamonds have brought little but death and destruction to Sierra Leone. Diamonds have been this war's best friend. Ben Wedeman, CNN, Freetown.