The United Nations’ top refugee official condemned Liberia’s handling of its growing humanitarian crisis on Wednesday, telling top leaders, ”You’re killing your own people.”
”This can’t go on,” Ruud Lubbers told a small group of government representatives during a stop in the war-blasted West African country’s capital, Monrovia.
The words from Lubbers, a former Dutch premier, were stunningly blunt –reflecting Liberia’s increasingly outcast status under warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor.
Three years of fighting between Taylor and his enemies in Liberia have displaced more than one million people, UN officials say.
More than 110 000 refugees or recent Liberian returnees are under care of the UN refugee agency in Liberia, and as many as 300 000 Liberians have taken refuge in neighboring countries.
Rights groups accuse both sides in Liberia’s 3-year-old rebellion of attacking civilians — but blame Taylor’s ill-disciplined, often ruthless fighters for many of the worst of the atrocities.
Lubbers said the situation in Monrovia had become so unbearable that local aid groups had asked that an armed peacekeeping force be sent to Liberia.
”That’s the first time I’ve heard (aid groups) demand a military presence” in a country, he said. ”Our local staff expressed grave fear about their safety.”
Lubbers, who called refugee affairs in Liberia a ”disaster” and ”totally unacceptable,” spent much of Wednesday in Monrovia before continuing to Sierra Leone on his five-nation trip.
As UN and Liberian officials faced off on Wednesday, fighting closed to within 20 kilometres of the capital. Gunshots echoed on the northern edge of the city, panicking war-displaced people at camps there.
Rebels, increasingly aggressive over the last year, repeatedly have pushed toward Monrovia in recent months. They came within seven kilometres of the capital in March.
In April, rebels attacked camps that shelter more than 50 000 displaced civilians, aid workers said.
The United Nations has imposed sanctions on Taylor and Liberia for guns-and diamond-trafficking with rebels, including the notoriously vicious Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone. The rebel movement gained infamy for its trademark atrocity of hacking the limbs off innocent civilians.
While 10 years of war ended in Sierra Leone last year, international fears linger about instability in West Africa — and in particular, links between Liberia and the seven month-old war in Ivory Coast, Liberia’s neighbour to the east.
Liberian fighters have taken up arms with both rebel and government forces in Ivory Coast.
In Monrovia on Wednesday, Taylor didn’t turn up for what had been a scheduled meeting with Lubbers.
Clearly annoyed, the UN refugee chief spoke flatly with local reporters who asked what the United Nations was doing to aid Liberia’s war-displaced. ”Your president makes it totally impossible,” Lubbers answered.
Liberian government officials said they planned to sit down with rebels in June to talk peace.
To find peace, said Lubbers, Taylor ”has to share power with others. It’s an illusion to think otherwise.”
Taylor, a former gasoline attendant in the Boston, Massachusetts, area, launched a ruinous seven year civil war in Liberia in 1989, and won elections the year after the war ended. – Sapa-AP