ELECTION 99
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

Indian to head UN Sierra Leone force

Indian Major General Vijay Kumar Jetley will head a 6,000-member United Nations Peacekeeping Force being deployed in Sierra Leone, the UN said yesterday.

The 55-year-old general, who has been commanding an infantry division on India's western frontiers, will take up his new duties in the next week.

Jetley is the second Indian in recent times to be selected by the United Nations for such a task. Earlier, Lt Gen Satish Nambiar commanded the UN Peacekeeping Force in Yugoslavia in the early nineties.

Gen Jetley, awarded the Uttam Yudh Seva medal while commanding a glacier sector as brigadier, has held prestigious appointments at the army headquarters and field formations. He was the deputy director of military operations and was also with the directorate-general of perspective planning.

Commissioned in the Dogra regiment in December 1965, Gen Jetley, on promotion to the rank of major general, commanded and infantry division in the western sector.

He is a graduate from the Defence Services Staff College and the National Defence College and has also done a higher command course.

Earlier in his career, Jetley served as a sector commander in southern Iran with the UN Iran-Iraq Military Observer Group that monitored a ceasefire immediately after the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

The Security Council voted unanimously on October 22 to establish the UN Mission in Sierra Leone to help implement a July peace accord aimed at ending a brutal eight-year civil war in the West African country.

The conflict claimed tens of thousands of lives. Thousands of civilians, including children, had limbs cut off by the rebels.

A large part of UNAMSIL will comprise troops from a Nigerian-led West African peacekeeping force called ECOMOG which helped restore the elected government of Sierra Leone to power in 1998 and will be responsible for security in areas where it is stationed, including around Freetown, the capital.

A veteran Nigerian diplomat, Ambassador Oluyemi Adeniji, was recently appointed Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special representative in charge of the overall UN operation in Sierra Leone.

Reuters

Tell us what you think of this report