Dec 21, 2005. /Lesprom Network/. The U.N. Security Council renewed timber sanctions on Liberia on Tuesday for another six months and asked an expert panel to take a fresh look at the ban by June 7. A panel of experts established by the 15-nation council recommended on December 9 that the sanctions stay in place. It cited the "chronic corruption and incompetence" of a transitional government set up at the end of a civil war in 2003 when then-president Charles Taylor was forced into exile in Nigeria. "Should sanctions be lifted on diamonds and timber there is little reason to believe that government revenue will be directed to the budget to be used for the benefit of the Liberian people," the panel said. The transitional government loses power in January when a new government, headed by Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a former U.N. and World Bank official, takes over. Tuesday's resolution called on Johnson-Sirleaf to reform existing logging concessions. Bans on diamond, weapons and timber exports were imposed between 2001 and 2003 after the Security Council accused Taylor of fueling war in neighboring Sierra Leone, through an illicit gems-for-guns trade. The London-based advocacy group Global Witness said in a recent report that Liberia's transitional government and the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the country had failed to control the exploitation of Liberia's natural resources. "With regards to timber, pit-sawing activities by ex-combatants continue unabated, generating large amounts of uncontrolled and unaccounted revenue," the group said.