BBC BREAKFAST WITH FROST
INTERVIEW:
MENZIES CAMPBELL MP and
COLONEL TIM SPICER
 MAY 14TH, 2000

Please note “BBC Breakfast with Frost” must be credited if any part of this 
transcript is used


DAVID FROST:
Well now the British military presence in Sierra Leone has been increased, the 
helicopter carrier HMS Ocean with 600 marines on board and the aircraft carrier 
HMS Illustrious have arrived in the area. Our correspondent Allan Little reports 
from the Sierra Leone capital, Freetown on the effect the British Forces are having.

[FILM CLIP]

DAVID FROST:
So could anything have been done to avoid the current situation in Sierra Leone? 
I’m joined by Colonel Tim Spicer whose company Sandline helped to reinstate the 
country’s President in 1998 and by the Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs and 
Defence spokesman Menzies Campbell. Menzies good morning.

MENZIES CAMPBELL:
Good morning.



DAVID FROST:
Let’s just do a catch-up first of all Tim, you think, don’t you, that this could all 
have been avoided?

TIM SPICER:
I think if there’d been some affirmative action much earlier in support of President 
Kabbah such as we’re seeing now or in some other format a much more effective 
military support, we wouldn’t be where we are today. 

DAVID FROST:
And what about, what about Sandline, you’ve said somewhere once that Sandline 
could have sorted this situation out and trained the Sierra Leone armies, if 
something like that had been done or if executive outcomes had not been fired in 
1996 under international pressure, wouldn’t we have had a better situation?

TIM SPICER:
Well I think it’s possible, obviously we’re not going to compare private military 
companies with the British force that’s down there at the moment but had  
Executive Outcomes  been allowed to continue with their campaign where they had 
the RUF almost defeated in detail or had our project with ECAMOG and the 
government developed I think we could have, we’d have had a very good chance of 
beating the RUF.

DAVID FROST:
And do you think in fact, and do you think in fact that the Brigadier was spot on in 
his assessment of the strength of our enemy out there, the RUF?

TIM SPICER:
Yes he’s in a much better position than I am to judge it but I think he is spot on and 
I think his description of the RUF was exactly right, they’re thugs and bullies, 
they’re not professionals.

DAVID FROST:
So as far as you’re concerned you should have been allowed to stay?

TIM SPICER:
I think we could have contributed, yes, a great deal. 

DAVID FROST:
In fact Menzies there is, here we have the one and only William Shawcross saying 
that the recent history of Sierra Leone shows that mercenaries or private security 
forces properly supervised and controlled may be the best answer to this in some 
other crises, given what we’ve seen of the state of training of the forces of the UN 
there is that possible?

MENZIES CAMPBELL:
Well that’s a big step-change for the international community, to say we’re not 
going to send our own forces but we’re going to pay people to go and do the job, I 
have some reservations about that I have to say and I think there would be very 
considerable reservations in the United Nations, not only in the Security Council 
but on the General Assembly as well. 

DAVID FROST:
What about the current situation, it was a very positive report we had from the 
Brigadier earlier, what was your reaction to what he was saying?

MENZIES CAMPBELL:
Well if you take that plus Alan Little’s report it’s clear that Britain’s intervention 
has been absolutely crucial. But it’s also clear that the success of that intervention 
has raised expectations and that’s why I think that what we really ought now to be 
doing so far as the United Kingdom is concerned is say okay we’re going to be 
there for much longer than was originally intended and we’re satisfied we can do 
that, we’ve got enough men and equipment, it doesn’t cause problems with our 
other obligations, do we believe there are reasonable prospects of success and 
staying there, that question appears to be answered in the affirmative. And thirdly 
can we get a much more robust mandate from the United Nations because as has 
already been pointed out they went there to broker a peace, the United Nations 
force, but now they’re actually engaged in a war trying to ensure that the legitimate 
government of President Kabbah remains in office.

DAVID FROST:
But so that in that particular situation in terms of President Kabbah and that 
situation out there, it’s not that you object to what we’re doing in the sense that…

MENZIES CAMPBELL:
Not at all.

DAVID FROST:
You think it’s idealistic and should continue for many months?

MENZIES CAMPBELL:
Absolutely.

DAVID FROST:
But we ought to know exactly what we’re committed to, is that what you’re saying?

MENZIES CAMPBELL:
Exactly, there has to be clarity and there has appeared to be some difference of 
emphasis between the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence in the last 48, 72 
hours, we went in order to evacuate British nationals and others and to secure the 
airport, it’s perfectly clear from what Brigadier tells us that we’re doing more than 
that. When we tried to press the government on Thursday in the House of 
Commons for an early debate we were rather batted aside. I think the House of 
Commons and the British public are entitled to know precisely what the objectives 
are, military and political, I believe we have a substantial contribution to make there 
but there has to be clarity about the objectives.


DAVID FROST:
And in terms of the objectives, we’ve got 800 people, say, troops there at the 
moment, another 600 or some say 700 offshore, with that sort of number can we do 
what’s needed to be done?

TIM SPICER:
I mean if you, if you have a clearly defined mission for the British force either on 
their own or in support of the United Nations that force is more than adequate to 
completely rout the RUF.

DAVID FROST:
It is? Even though we were hearing about 5,000 to 10,000 trained guys in the RUF, 
1500 of ours could do the job?

TIM SPICER:
Yes.

DAVID FROST:
With the help of the UN?

TIM SPICER:
With the help of the UN and the support that we’ve got there in terms of the harriers 
and the helicopters. But you’re talking about quality troops, professional highly 
trained motivated soldiers against a bunch of thugs and disorganised, in military 
terms, even if you heard what David Richards was saying about their structure and 
their command and control, there was, there was no question they are no match for 
the British Forces and if the British Forces are backing the United Nations then 
you’ve got an effective force.

DAVID FROST:
And Foday Sakoh did you ever meet him in the course of your…


TIM SPICER:
No I didn’t.

DAVID FROST:
You didn’t, possible he’s dead, it’s possible he’s dead but he should never have 
been released, you feel?

TIM SPICER:
Well in my view it’s, part of the problem is that the speed and the speed of which 
the Lome Peace Accord was rushed through and the detail of it, this is a man who 
had led a gang of thugs and butchers, responsible for rape, mutilation, murder, you 
name it, who was sentenced to death and he was on death row. It’s rather an 
unusual step to then bring him into the government and make him the minister in 
charge of the most important natural resort of the country. 

DAVID FROST:
Like putting the fox in the hen coop you said?

TIM SPICER:
Do you think that giving the fox the keys to the chicken coop.

MENZIES CAMPBELL:
One point which is worth making I think, that part of the United Nations difficulty 
has been that they wanted 11,000 troops and they only got 8,000 which meant that 
they were always labouring under that very substantial burden. And of course it’s 
not just the numbers you get, it’s the quality of those you get and often the UN’s 
got to take troops from those who are willing to send them, not necessarily those 
who are best equipped for the job and that’s why the intervention of the, of a force 
from the United Kingdom has had such an extraordinary effect because with our 
experience in Northern Ireland and the Gulf and Bosnia and Kosovo we really do 
come to these things with an enormous reservoir of experience and professionalism. 
I’m not just pumping up Britain for some sort of purpose connected with 
nationalism or anything of that kind, but we do actually bring a very, very high 
degree of professional and that’s why we’ve had such an intervention. We have to 
try and find a way of ensuring that the United Nations has access to that kind of 
professionalism when it goes about peace-keeping.

DAVID FROST:
Well in fact some people have suggested that the way that the UN could have a 
professional force is in fact to have a rapid reaction force that is in fact paid, that is 
in fact mercenary, that, that wouldn’t have these problems because we’ve read all 
about the things about the, some of the UN troops arriving without weapons, with 
ineffective maps and even in some cases without uniforms, I mean…

TIM SPICER:
The fundamental problem with the United Nations in any form of military 
deployment and that is it doesn’t have the fabric that a professional armed, set of 
armed forces like we have in this country has, there is no standing military force 
and a standing military force would go some way to correcting this problem. It 
doesn’t have commonality of equipment as you’ve highlighted, it doesn’t have 
proper communications system, it doesn’t have tactics, tactical doctrine, 
commonality of training and all the other things that make national armies or 
properly structured military organisations like Nato work.

DAVID FROST:
Well that’s all very interesting and we’ll put those points and others that we’ve 
developed during the morning here to the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, in just a 
moment or two, thank you both very much, very much indeed.

END


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