By Umaru Fofana
Sierra Leone’s minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation, Dr Allie Kabbah says the issue over the disputed border town of Yenga has been resolved.
Yenga was an undisputed part of Kailahun District before the rebel war of the 1990s, but Guinea laid claims to it after its troops who’d been deployed to help deal with the war in Sierra Leone, refused to leave.
Speaking to Politico from the United States, Dr Kabbah, who hails from the area, said he had held a series of meetings on 24 April 2019 with the Guinean president, Alpha Conde and the ministers of foreign and internal affairs.
“What remains now is a huge vacuum of infrastructure which we intend to fill immediately”, Dr Kabbah said, emphasizing that his government was now “approaching the Yenga issue as a development issue”.
Asked what that meant, he said the Sierra Leone government would build a bridge linking Yenga to Guinea, housing for the police and the army, and open the Koindu Market which used to be an international trade fair that brought traders from Guinea and Liberia.
Yenga was demilitarized after a series of meetings between former president Ernest Bai Koroma and Prof Conde which led to the withdrawal of Guinean troops and their armored tanks. But Sierra Leonean troops were not allowed access to the area.
“Conakry has now affirmed that Yenga is a part of Sierra Leone”, Dr Kabbah said. He went on to say that Sierra Leoneans would now be allowed to resettle there, something the Guineans would not allow them to do even during the voter registration.
© 2019 Politico Online
