Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, General Abdulsalami Abubakar Meeting With British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook

British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook has met the leaders of Nigeria and Sierra Leone on the first visit by a Western politician since the national elections.

British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook on Tuesday (March 9) encouraged Nigeria's rulers to keep troops in Sierra Leone while talks begin to end one of Africa's most brutal wars.

Nigerian officials said Cook had asked military ruler General Abdulsalami Abubakar not to link withdrawal of ECOMOG peacekeepers to the May 29 return of civilian rule in Nigeria but rather to progress on peace in Sierra Leone.

"I want to salute the immense effort Nigeria has made to try and restore stabilty in Sierra Leone and to defeat the rebels" Cook told reporters after meeting Abubakar and Sierra Leone's President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah together in Abuja.

Nigeria leads the 15,000-strong West African peacekeeping
force, contributing more than 80 percent of ECOMOG's troops and almost its entire budget.

Sierra Leone has put Cook into political trouble at home, where he and his Foreign Office have been criticised for their role in an embarrassing breach of a United Nations arms embargo involving a British firm's help to restore Kabbah a year ago.

British and Sierra Leonean officials said that while Cook has encouraged the Nigerians to stay for now, he had also told Kabbah that he had to negotiate with the rebels so the Nigerians could eventually withdraw.

"Nigeria will not wake up on the 30th of May and say OK Nigerians will come back home. There will be a gradual understanding," Abubakar told reporters.

Cook, on his first trip to Africa after nearly two years in office, is the first Western minister to visit Nigeria
since last month's presidential election, marking the penultimate step on the army's plan to relinquish power on May 29.

On Wednesday, Cook is due to meet General Olusegun Obasanjo, the former military ruler who won the election which
should bring to an end the latest 15-year stretch of military rule in the oil-producing country of 108 million people.

He said he expected Nigeria to be restored to full membership of the Commonwealth of Britain and its former colonies, from which it was suspended in 1995 for human rights abuses under late dictator Sani Abacha.