Hopes high of freeing soldiers

British troops were captured while on patrol

Negotiations are continuing in Sierra Leone to secure the release of 11 Royal Irish Regiment soldiers kidnapped by the rebel group West Side Boys.

UN spokesman Lieutenant Commander Patrick Coker said the UN had been in touch with the soldiers' abductors, and was hopeful of a successful conclusion to negotiations very soon.

The 11 members of the RIR, ten of whom are from Northern Ireland, together with a soldier from Sierra Leone, were kidnapped on Friday outside the capital, Freetown.

UK Armed Forces Minister John Spellar said there were grounds for optimism that the soldiers would be released soon.

"We also had a situation last year when five British officers working with the United Nations were captured in Sierra Leone and that was resolved peacefully," he said.

'Use force'

But Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Menzies Campbell warned it might be necessary to use force to end the kidnap situation.

"We should not rule out the possibility of using military operations as a means of achieving their safe return," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

Government officials in Sierra Leone say the rebels have made a number of demands including food, medicine and the release of one of their leaders from prison.

The prisoner being demanded by the rebels is known variously as Bomb Blast or General Papa and has been detained in Freetown's central prison for almost two months.

Soldiers 'unharmed'

Commander of the the RIR deployment in Sierra Leone, Brigadier Gordon Hughes said the soldiers - 10 of whom are from Northern Ireland - were unharmed.

"They have been given food, water, shelter, and they are generally being well treated.

"Suffice to say that the situation in the area is now stable, it is calm, we are talking to representatives of the group."

British forces arrived to bolster the peacekeeping mission

British troops were sent into the country in May to evacuate foreign nationals and secure Freetown as rebel forces advanced on the capital.

Although the bulk of the forces withdrew weeks later, the captured men are part of a team of over 200 British troops who remained behind to train and advise the army of the elected Sierra Leone Government.

The rebel group, made up of ex-soldiers from the old Sierra Leonean Army, claims allegiance to the country's former military junta, and has recently become involved in a dispute with the current government.

The soldiers' capture comes a day after the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan announced plans to boost the size of the UN peacekeeping force in Sierra Leone.

Sierra Leone strife

Sierra Leone's eight-year civil war is bound up with the struggle for control over the country's vast diamond resources.

Rebels continue to cause problems

Years of corruption followed the end of British rule in 1961, as a powerful elite in the capital kept the rest of the country in poverty.

The rural poor grew increasingly resentful, so that when the rebel movement, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) was created, there was no shortage of recruits.

The RUF, responsible for committing widespread atrocities against civilians, is now fighting both the government and the UN peacekeeping force which includes Indian, Nigerian and Ghanaian troops.