Airstrip One

Sierra Leone's a stirring

You and I may never have heard of Victor Bout. What? Really? You know Victor Bout and the evil Sanjivan Ruprah.

No these are not villains from a particularly unoriginal episode of "The Man from Uncle", they are real people and they pose a real danger to Britain, Mr. Bond.

Well they do to those British troops in Sierra Leone. Not to Britain as such. In parliamentary questions a couple of weeks back. The Labour MP Helen Jones in what was a planted question asked about these two characters. They are sanctions busters, who supply arms to the rebels in Sierra Leone in return for diamonds. For their sake we are going to be launching "smart sanctions" on Liberia, and once they don't work - who knows? Just think, this was once all to do with evacuating a couple of hundred British subjects. Yeah, right.

A couple of things to watch out for:

I am glad to have the opportunity to say that the British Government are urging all of those who are involved in this dreadful African war in the Congo to respect the Lusaka agreement, to which they signed up. Following President Kabila's assassination, we want to move forward beyond the deadlock to which he was unfortunately a party and to get the United Nations peacekeepers deployed. That can occur only after all the belligerent forces in the region, including African armies and rebel forces, draw back as they agreed to do in Lusaka almost two years ago. We can then end the war and allow prosperity and peace for the Congolese people.

Can then end the war? Who does he think he's kidding.

And this is even better:

I welcome the hon. Gentleman's comments on the importance of the Sierra Leone army's deployment into the diamond-producing areas of that country. That holds the key to a long-term solution to the conflict. British forces are helping to train the Sierra Leone army so that it is capable of deploying with the support of the United Nations.

In the end we will be going in to these diamond producing areas.