By Vincent t'Sas
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (Reuters) - The United Nations searched on Monday for 500 peacekeepers believed kidnapped by rebels in Sierra Leone as Britain sent troops and warships to West Africa.
Libya, which has been mediating with rebel leader Foday Sankoh, said it was confident the crisis could be defused.
But witnesses in the west of the capital Freetown reported firing from nearby hills and reports from the interior suggested that the situation remained volatile. The reasons for the Freetown shooting were unclear.
The first paratroops from Britain, the former colonial power, arrived in Senegal and witnesses saw two warships off Freetown in readiness to evacuate foreigners.
The U.N. which is sending the head of its worldwide peacekeeping operations to Sierra Leone, says that nearly 500 of its peacekeepers are being held by Sankoh's fighters in the Makeni area in the center and in and around Kailahun in the east.
Military sources said that Sierra Leone's new army, which is being rebuilt following eight years of civil war, had sent troops inland to Masiaka, a potential flashpoint on the main highway to Freetown from rebel-held areas further north and east.
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's Africa pointman Ali Tureiki, who has been mediating with Revolutionary United Front (RUF) leader Sankoh in Freetown, said he was confident of a breakthrough.
''The news we are expecting is the release of the U.N. peacekeepers and we hope that it will come in the next hours,'' Tureiki said told a news conference.
He said that the deputy commander of the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL), General Mohammed Garba of Nigeria, would travel east by helicopter with Sankoh's blessing Monday to try to locate peacekeepers and secure their release.
''He (Sankoh) gave the green light,'' Tureiki said, adding that Sankoh, who publicly denies holding any peacekeepers, had promised to send an RUF team on the same mission. ''I do not know if they go together or separately,'' Tureiki added.
Libya is widely believed to have funded Sankoh's RUF in the past and to have influence with Sankoh.
Added Complication
Freetown remained outwardly calm Monday but Tureiki and state radio reported the overnight arrest of up to 25 members of the RUF's political wing, the Revolutionary United Front Party (RUFP), including Trade and Industry Minister Mike Lamin.
''The arrest of RUFP top brass will not help the situation but will escalate more problems to the peace process,'' Sankoh aide Eldred Collins told Reuters.
State radio later said Lamin had been freed.
Around 5,000 demonstrators marched through central Freetown Monday heading for Sankoh's home to deliver a protest note, witnesses said.
UNAMSIL started arriving in November to police a peace deal. Sankoh, who took up arms in 1991 and fought successive civilian and military governments, signed in person.
The standoff began on May 1 as a dispute over disarmament. Sankoh says that peacekeepers tried to use force to disarm fighters who were not yet ready to hand in their weapons.