US President George Bush said on Wednesday he would not overstretch US forces already on manpower-intensive missions in Iraq, the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, with a major deployment in Liberia.
Bush said ”nothing had changed” in the US position on joining a peacekeeping force for a nation in the grip of a social and economic collapse brought on by a ruinous four-year civil war.
”We won’t overextend our troops, period,” Bush said at a press conference with South African President Thabo Mbeki on the second leg of his African tour.
He went on to detail US work to train seven battalions of peacekeepers for African states, apparently suggesting that US forces could take a support rather than a combat role in Liberia.
”It’s a sensible policy for us to continue that training mission, so that we never do get overextended,” Bush said.
”One of the things you will see us do is invigorate this — reinvigorate the stategy of helping people help themselves by providing training opportunities.”
Bush renewed his call for Liberian President Charles Taylor to step down and repeated assurances he gave in Senegal on Tuesday that the United States would work with west African states and the United Nations to bolster a Liberian ceasefire.
But he said that with US assessment teams in Monrovia it was still too soon to judge exactly what the US response would be.
”Nothing has changed from about 12 hours ago on that question,”
Bush said, referring to his remarks in Dakar. ”I said ‘yes we would be involved’ and we are now determining the extent of our involvement.”
Bush spoke as US military experts began to inspect the crumbling infrastructure of Liberia’s capital Monrovia, as part of an assessment mission the White House will use to define the US role in the west African country.
The US team was due to examine conditions at Monrovia’s main hospital, harbor and two airports. United Nation’s Secretary General Kofi Annan suggested last month that the United States lead a peacekeeping force in a country founded in the 19th century by freed American slaves.
Liberia has been embroiled in nearly constant warfare since a conflict erupted in 1990 that lasted until 1997, when former warlord Taylor was elected president. Two years later, the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy plunged the country into its latest war in a bid to topple Taylor.
Hundreds of thousands of Liberians have fled fighting on the outskirts of the capital in recent weeks to seek refuge in the heart of Monrovia, where many are living rough, with little in the way of food and hygiene.
Taylor, who accepted an asylum offer from Nigeria over the weekend, was quoted as saying on Tuesday that he would not leave for exile until an international force arrived. – Sapa-AFP