UN hostages to be released

The government of Liberia says rebels in Sierra Leone have agreed to release about forty wounded United Nations peacekeepers.

A spokesman for President Charles Taylor Reginald Goodridge told the BBC he expected the releases to take place on Wednesday.

He said the government was trying to find a non-UN helicopter to ferry the wounded men from the jungles of eastern Sierra Leone to the border town of Foya, from where they could be go to Monrovia for medical treatment. The spokesman said it appeared that the peacekeepers had sustained their wounds when they were taken hostage, not afterwards. Earlier, the UN said about a-hundred-and-forty of its peacekeepers were now being handed over, after negotiations involving Mr Taylor -- who has in the past been criticised for supporing the rebels.

More than three-hundred UN hostages are still in rebel hands.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service