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The heads of all five United Nations peacekeeping missions in west Africa began talks yesterday in Senegal on efforts to stop lawlessness in one country spreading to others, UN officials said.

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, chief of the UN Office for West Africa (Unowa), late Thursday said the meeting on Goree island off Dakar would assess developments and their impact throughout the region.

In following up similar talks in Sierra Leone last November, the mission heads would discuss policy coordination and harmonizing their activities across west Africa, Unowa earlier announced.

"We shall also be looking at the regional side, particularly the region around the borders of Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea," Ould Abdallah said, proposing joint UN patrols as one option on the frontiers.

Sierra Leone, Liberia and Ivory Coast, which lie next to each other along the Atlantic Coast and all have borders with Guinea and its dense forests, are each at different stages in emerging from civil wars.

Hosted by Unowa, the meeting brought together Albert Tevoedjre (UN mission in Ivory Coast - Minuci), Jacques Klein (UN mission in Liberia -Unmil), Daudi Ngelautwa Mwakawago (UN mission in Sierra Leone - Unamsil), and David Stephen (UN peace-building support office in Guinea Bissau -Unogbis).

West African borders are notoriously porous and have for decades frequently been crossed not only by refugees from conflict but also by fighters, arms and ammunition and exported chaos.

"There is a kind of lawless zone, where there are refugees, displaced people, rebels, and people wanted by national legal systems," Ould-Abdallah said.

Liberian former president Charles Taylor, who was last August forced into exile as a rebel war drew to an end, has been indicted by a UN war crimes court for Sierra Leone on charges of arming and training rebels in that country in exchange for "blood diamonds".

Other issues on the table in Dakar included the potential consequences of the "drawdown of the UN mission in Sierra Leone", "the regional impact of the Ivory Coast crisis" and the "cross-border humanitarian impact of crises, especially in Guinea," Unowa said in a statement Tuesday.

Guinea-Bissau lies to the south of Senegal's Casamance province, where armed separatists remain active, and itself went through a bloodless coup in September last year.

Ould Abdallah said a UN decision in principle to send troops to Ivory Coast, where French and west African soldiers are currently engaged in peacekeeping duties, was up for discussion.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has proposed that a peacekeeping force of 6 240 men be sent to Ivory Coast, and the UN Security Council is due to vote on the issue on February 27.

UN troops "in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast could undertake joint patrols, show their presence" as a way of tackling border issues, Ould Abdallah said. – Sapa-AFP.

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