Annan opposes 'impunity' in Sierra Leone, elsewhere

ACCRA, Ghana (Reuters) -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, on his first official visit to his home country, said crimes should not go unpunished whether in Sierra Leone or elsewhere in the world.

Annan told reporters at Accra airport on Saturday that the world body was considering a draft proposal on how to deal with Sierra Leone's detained rebel leader Foday Sankoh.

"I don't think that we must allow impunity to stand in any part of the world," Annan said of atrocities committed by Sankoh's Revolutionary United Front (RUF), which took up arms against a 1999 peace deal in May and briefly held hundreds of U.N. peacekeepers hostage.

The U.N. Security Council is considering setting up a war crimes tribunal for Sierra Leone to be based in a nearby West African country, following proposals tabled by the United States last week.

Sankoh launched Sierra Leone's civil war in 1991. His rebels and their allies deliberately mutilated defenseless civilians during a reign of terror at the height of the conflict.

The 1999 peace deal included amnesties for Sankoh and other rebels, a provision which was widely criticized at the time. The government, which arrested Sankoh in May, says that he and others should stand trial for their acts since the peace deal.

Annan has visited Ghana three times since he became the first black African Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1997, but the official visit, which begins on Tuesday, will be his first to his home country.

Annan, welcomed at the airport in the capital Accra by President Jerry Rawlings, was accompanied by his Swedish wife Nane.

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