Jonah, The Diplomat Who Haunts Freetown's Putschists

NEW YORK, United Nations , 11 June A military showdown with a combined West African force is probably the main fear of the junior officers who toppled Sierra Leone's democratically-elected government on May 25 this year.

But while the Nigerian-led forces are deploying and efforts continue to seek a negotiated solution to the crisis, the putschists face another formidable foe -- James Jonah, Sierra Leone's experienced United Nations envoy.

Since the coup halted Sierra Leone's slow recovery from years of civil war and cut short its fledgling democracy, Jonah has embarked on a diplomatic offensive to deny international recognition to the new military leaders.

From the UN, where he retired in 1994 after more than 30 years of service, to the Organisation of African Unity and the regional group Ecowas, Jonah has tapped his wide contacts in seeking to isolate the coup plotters and their rebel allies.

At the just-concluded summit of African leaders in Harare, where the Sierra Leonean diplomat represented his country, he succeeded in obtaining a strong OAU condemnation of the coup and the organisation's support for a possible military action to reverse it.

Jonah has also succeeded in putting the soldiers on the defensive by alleging, at a meeting with the president of the UN Security Council on Monday, that the coup leaders were planning a genocide against supporters of the ousted president, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah.

He asked the council to issue a warning to the soldiers, as well as to set up an ad-hoc tribunal to try the putschists if any harm should come to the people of Sierra Leone . The credibility of the soldiers has also been severely dented by reports that the soldiers have asked for a 46-million-dollar pay-off to step down and allow Tejan Kabbah to return.

To show his utter disdain for the coup makers, Jonah has used an arsenal of scathing words, describing them variously as renegade soldiers , a little bunch of illiterate thugs and a group of pretenders masquerading as the government of my country.

He even called them naive for daring to recall him, in the wake of the coup, as Sierra Leone's permanent representative to the UN.

But Jonah, unusually blunt for a diplomat, has also not spared the media, which he has used effectively since the coup, or any group he perceived as seeking to delay a reversal of the coup, the country's third in five years.

In his second press conference since the coup, at the UN headquarters in New York on Monday, he lambasted the media for not accurately reporting the shelling of Sierra Leone's military headquarters by Nigerian gunboats last week.

According to him, the media missed the point in focusing on an alleged retreat by Nigerian forces rather than the inhuman action by the coup plotters.

He also accused British charity group, International Alert, which tried to mediate the crisis, of seeking to strengthen the coup by seeking Security Council involvement.

Asked if the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) should seek the council's mandate before using force in Sierra Leone, he said: we don't need to do that because Ecowas has demonstrated...that it is a credible regional organisation, more than any of them (Security Council members) have done.

Jonah has every reason to be angry.

Since his retirement, the 63-year-old diplomat has devoted his time to his country, presiding over a successful political transition as chairman of Sierra Leone's interim national electoral commission and participating in reconciliation efforts as a member of the country's national security council.

Now, faced with the prospect of another transition programme under the Maj. Johnny Koromah-led regime, which has asked to stay in power for 18 months, Jonah's fuse is very short.

We in Sierra Leone are tired of military regime, he said. We cannot spare the time to tolerate this new military coup. PANA