For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
January 16, 2004
Executive Order
Termination of Emergency with Respect to Sierra Leone and Liberia
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and
the laws of the United States, including the International Emergency
Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.), the National Emergencies
Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.) (NEA), and section 5 of the United Nations
Participation Act of 1945, as amended (22 U.S.C. 287c),
I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, find
that the situations that gave rise to the declaration of a national
emergency in Executive Order 13194 of January 18, 2001, with respect to
Sierra Leone and the expansion of the scope of that emergency in
Executive Order 13213 of May 22, 2001, with respect to Liberia, have
been significantly altered given that in January 2002 the Government of
Sierra Leone, the Sierra Leonean rebel group Revolutionary United Front
(RUF), and the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone declared the war
in Sierra Leone to have ended; the parties to the Liberian civil war
entered into a Comprehensive Peace Agreement in August 2003; the RUF no
longer exists as a military organization; Charles Taylor, who was the
prime instigator of violence both in Sierra Leone and in Liberia, has
resigned from the Liberian presidency and gone into exile; the
Government of Sierra Leone has established a rough diamond
certification regime that meets the minimum standards of the Kimberley
Process Certification Scheme; and the United States has implemented the
Clean Diamond Trade Act (Public Law 108-19), prohibiting the
importation into the United States of rough diamonds that are not
controlled through the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme,
currently including rough diamonds from Liberia. Accordingly, I hereby
terminate the national emergency declared and expanded in scope in
those two prior orders, revoke those orders, and further order:
Section 1. Pursuant to section 202 of the NEA (50 U.S.C. 1622),
termination of the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13194
and expanded in scope in Executive Order 13213 shall not affect any
action taken or proceeding pending not finally concluded or determined
as of the effective date of this order, or any action or proceeding
based on any act committed prior to such date, or any rights or duties
that matured or penalties that were incurred prior to such date.
Sec. 2. This order is not intended to, and does not, create any
right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in
equity by any party against the United States, its departments,
agencies, instrumentalities, or entities, its officers or employees, or
any other person.
Sec. 3. This order is effective at 12:01 a.m. eastern standard
time on January 16, 2004. This order shall be transmitted to the
Congress and published in the Federal Register.
GEORGE W. BUSH
THE WHITE HOUSE,
January 15, 2004.
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