By Christo Johnson
FREETOWN, July 9 (Reuters) - The political party born out of Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front (RUF), whose rebels hacked off civilians' limbs during a brutal civil war, disbanded on Monday admitting it could not fight next month's elections.
The RUF took up arms against the Freetown government in 1991 under the leadership of the charismatic Corporal Foday Sankoh, and at its height controlled much of the West African country, including rich diamond fields whose gems it used to buy guns.
"The Revolutionary United Front Party can not contest ... the presidential and parliamentary elections," interim party leader Gbassay Kanu told reporters outside the locked door of the party's deserted office in the capital Freetown.
"While we continued to keep the party going all these years, we finally discovered that we are not getting any financial support from government or the international community to keep our party going, so we have gone bankrupt," Kanu added.
He said the RUFP's entire membership had joined the opposition All Peoples Congress Party, which will participate in the presidential and parliamentary elections on August 11.
Sankoh died in 2003 in captivity while awaiting trial before a U.N.-backed war crimes court that is currently trying his one-time ally Charles Taylor, ex-warlord and former president of neighbouring Liberia, for his part in Sierra Leone's war.
THE LION
Sankoh, known to some as "The Lion", launched the RUF as a political party after a 1999 peace deal with the words "War is over and now we are talking politics".
Months later his fighters disavowed the peace deal and took hostage hundreds of soldiers serving with a nascent U.N. peacekeeping force, prompting a high-profile military intervention by former colonial power Britain.
President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah finally declared the war "Dun dun" ('over' in Krio dialect) in January 2002 and was re-elected four months afterwards with a huge majority.
Sankoh, already behind bars, was barred from standing as president in those elections, and the RUFP failed to garner a single parliamentary seat.
Kabbah, barred by the constitution from seeking a third elected term in next month's vote, has thrown his weight behind his deputy, Solomon Berewa, who will contest the elections for the ruling Sierra Leone People's Party.
