Statements by Mr Cook and Mr Lloyd
Robin Cook and his colleague Tony Lloyd used the protection of Parliamentary privilege during the debate called by the Opposition on the Foreign Affairs Committee report on Sierra Leone and the arms shipment delivered to President Kabbah's recognised government by Sandline International to make a number of statements about the company with which we take issue. Some of those statements are reported below and are followed by Sandline's observations.
Cook: The main interest of Sandline International and its sister group of companies has been not democracy, but diamonds.
Sandline has never received nor ever sought to receive payment or reward in the form of diamonds or any other mineral asset.
Cook: [Mr Howard] has never explained how he imagines that a speech [made by Mr Lloyd in which he said that the embargo applied to the 'junta'] in March could have caused confusion to Sandline when it signed a contract the previous December or when it supplied arms in the previous February. Not even Colonel Spicer has used the novel line of reasoning that in December 1997 he was confused by a speech that was to be made in March 1998.
Mr Cook is well aware that neither Sandline nor Colonel Spicer have ever suggested that Mr Lloyd's March 1998 speech was of relevance. There were numerous instances in 1997 when the government made it plain that the embargo applied to the junta, including a press line published on the Foreign Office website and in a communiqué issued on 27 October 1997 at the end of the Commonwealth Heads of Government conference, to which President Kabbah was invited as the Prime Minister's personal guest. Paragraph 16 of the Foreign Affairs Committee report outlines all these instances, including a telegram sent on 9 October 1997 by the Foreign Office to Posts, stating the embargo applied 'to the junta', which, in December last year Mr Cook personally stated was 'plainly wrong'.
Even the Foreign Affairs Committee concluded that: 'government policy on individual arms embargoes must never again be stated in a way which could mislead Parliament, the public and even the FCO's own staff'. It is Mr Cook who adopted a 'novel line' in the presentation of his arguments and not Sandline as he alleges.
Lloyd: Does the policy of the Conservative party, now in opposition, depend on the espousal of the use of mercenaries - people who have destroyed Sierra Leone and parts of west Africa; ripped the diamonds out of that area; killed those whom they are paid to kill; and worked on either side?
Mr Lloyd is allowing his personal prejudices to cloud his Ministerial judgment - he stubbornly refuses to acknowledge that, in the absence of any outside intervention force, private military companies are the only protection for democracy from anarchy and innocent people from murder. He disingenuously draws no distinction in his statement between the 'mercenaries' to whom he refers and Sandline, the company at the heart of this debate. If Mr Lloyd was intending to include Sandline in the activities to which he refers, we challenge him to repeat his statement outside the privilege of the House of Commons.
Statements by other MPs
The content of the Commons debate went mainly unreported in the newspapers. However, there were a number of statements made by MPs which Sandline feels are worth repeating here:
Sir John Stanley: It is abundantly clear, indeed indisputable, that what impaled the Foreign Office on the Sandline International affair was the decision, which was conscious and deliberate, to misdescribe the arms embargo policy... . The misdescription started at an early stage and continued from the Autumn of 1997 through the rest of that year to when President Kabbah was restored... . I find it singularly unattractive and somewhat distasteful that, all the way through the piece on Sierra Leone, Ministers have sought, on the Floor of the House and in evidence before the Foreign Affairs Committee, to lay the blame for the misdescription of the policy at the door of officials.
Crispin Blunt: The practitioners knew the harsh truth that only military force would remove an unpleasant military junta from rule in Sierra Leone. The Minister denied that reality. His repeatedly expressed visceral distaste for private military companies spoke volumes about his inability to face the facts about what was required to restore the situation in Sierra Leone. The irony is that Sandline was central to President Kabbah's restoration to power in early 1998. The December attack by ECOMOG failed. Only when ECOMOG had the benefit of the decent military advice and staff planning supplied by Sandline under contract from President Kabbah was its subsequent attack on Freetown a success.
Crispin Blunt: The Government endorsed the end, but they were not prepared to face up to the means. No wonder Peter Penfold and Sandline were confused about the Government's position. They were the heroes of the shambles - people who were prepared to act to achieve the agreed and desirable objective. The Prime Minister endorsed Peter Penfold when he first became aware of the affair. Peter Penfold and Sandline pursued their goals through a sea of cavilling Ministers and officials, few of whom acted with courage and decisiveness, or accepted responsibility. The primary objective of Ministers and many officials has been to cover their backs. That characterised the Foreign Secretary's handling of the reports. The horrifying harshness of what was happening in Sierra Leone was accompanied by Ministers trying to face in all directions at once.
The real sadness in Sierra Leone is the ongoing suffering faced by the people of that country, a suffering that no first world democracy has been prepared to end by direct intervention. Sandline, on the other hand, was - and still is - prepared to help.
Sandline International leaves it to the reader to draw his or her own conclusions as to the ethics of Mr Cook's foreign policy towards Sierra Leone.