Lagos — Former President of Sierra Leone, Alhaji Teejan Kabbah, yesterday said forgiving former Liberian leader, Mr. Charles Taylor, over his "atrocities" against the people of Sierra-Leone, was a difficult thing for him to do.

Kabbah, a two-term leader of Sierra Leone, was President of the diamond-rich country when Taylor, then President of the neighbouring Liberia, was alleged to be sponsoring a guerilla group, Revolutionary United Front (RUF) that fought Kabbah's government from all fronts all through most of his tenure.

Taylor is currently being tried by the United Nations International Tribunal for War Crimes for allegedly sponsoring war and criminal activities in Sierra Leone.

Kabbah, who was in Nigeria at the weekend for the fifth edition of the Nigeria Telecommunications Awards, told THISDAY that it would be difficult for him to forgive Taylor if he continues to be unrepentant as he exhibited in recent interviews.

Speaking further at the Oriental Hotel in Lekki-Lagos, Kabbah said, "It is difficult to ask if I can forgive Charles Taylor because I spoke to him many times. I said what is going on in your name and with your knowledge and connivance is bad, not only for Sierra Leone but for West Africa and African children. I spoke to him, then, I followed that up with a letter. I sent my vice-president with a letter to him, pleading with him along those lines."

Narrating how he engaged the empathy of other African leaders to prevail on Taylor to desist from his alleged plundering of Sierra Leone, Kabbah recalled: "In fact, there was a meeting with the African Union in Accra and all the others (presidents) were there - all the leaders - yes, all the West African presidents were there but then we had Thabo Mbeki with us, somebody from outside the region. I tried hard. I spoke to him, I asked people to prevail on him."

According to Kabbah, trying to extract a promise from Taylor was very frustrating. "He would say this to me and he would be doing something else without my knowing. I will phone him. We got to the stage where I think we had to go to court on this. Well myself, I decided that perhaps it will be a good idea for us to have the special court in Sierra Leone so that if people see and know that even if a president does something which is not right there is some facility for the president to be questioned about that and for him to explain his own side of the story and that's how we went about setting up that court."

Kabbah, who was in the company of his wife, also said nemesis has caught up with Taylor. "It is so interesting when I remember all these things in retrospect. We were attending a meeting - ECOWAS meeting in Ghana and that morning, there was an agreement by my government and the UN that we would not interfere in the running of the special court. They didn't tell me that they were going to make him to appear in court and so on; but when I got to Ghana, I was told that this had happened and that they were going to try and see how best they could accelerate the process."

Stating that the harrowing experience of war that his country went through can be traced to Taylor, the former Sierra Leonean President revealed his last ditch effort to make Taylor stop the war. "I, in the presence of the other presidents, spoke to Charles (Taylor). I said try and do something to end this thing (war) and finish it up. That's how it happened ... How my people suffered, whatever problems we may be having still is borne through Taylor's machination and his supporters; so to ask me if I can forgive him, yes, we should try to forgive each other. I will forgive you if you have been giving me the opportunity to stop doing criminal act, committing criminal act or killing and getting involved in killing of people and I spoke to you and you said yes I made a mistake. I will not do this type of thing again, but Taylor never said that, you can hear his voice on radio during interviews. He still talks authoritatively, without showing any remorse. So asking me whether I will forgive him, I think I have to think about that."

Explaining why he honoured the invitation to the fifth anniversary of the Nigeria Telecoms Awards, Kabbah said, "I have brothers here doing what I consider to be a fantastic job, not only for Nigeria but the rest of Africa, particularly, West Africa and they asked me and I felt it was my duty to heed call. I am convinced that what they are doing is the best thing for Africa."

"I tell you why, many years ago before independence, you wanted to phone somebody in Guinea which is just next door to us you had to go from Freetown, you phone to London and from London they put you unto Paris and from Paris before you get back again to Guinea. Now you can see the type of inconvenience our people went through. In those days, telecommunications was a difficult thing."

He related a personal example of the difficulties: "when my father died, I was in England, I had gone there on some mission and they kept on trying to get me from one place to the other. It was so difficult. Now it was because of this difficulty that's why a lot of pressure was put on the international telecommunication system that this was too much. We must be in a position where African countries can communicate with each other. I think that's the way it started and Nigeria has perfected it. I hope the whole of Africa will benefit from this."