Liberian rebels and government troops traded accusations on Monday of staging fresh attacks in violation of a month-old truce, as west African mediators probed the charges to try to salvage efforts to restore peace in the country.
Mohamed Ibn Chambas, the executive secretary of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) regional bloc which painstakingly brokered the June 17 ceasefire for Liberia, riven by almost incessant war since 1990, said he would talk to the belligerents to determine to what extent the peace process is threatened by their mutual allegations.
”I don’t have any independent confirmation but I am going to talk to the rebels and the government team today,” he said in Abidjan from the Ghanaian capital Accra where tortuous peace talks have been under way since early June.
”We hope that all these problems are exaggerated — the last thing we need now is an escalation on the military front,” he said.
The talks in Ghana are focussed now on the composition of an interim government after the departure of embattled President Charles Taylor, who now only controls a fifth of his war-ravaged country and was indicted on June 4 — the day the peace talks officially opened — for war crimes allegedly committed during Sierra Leone’s civil war.
Taylor, a former warlord who played a leading role in an earlier seven-year war in Liberia which ended in 1997, the year he was elected, recently accepted an asylum offer from Nigeria after agreeing to quit, albeit without specifying a date.
But Taylor has repeatedly stressed that he will not leave until an international peacekeeping force arrives to ensure a smooth transition.
The rebels, meanwhile, insisted on Friday that Taylor must go before peacekeepers are deployed.
”It will be totally unacceptable for any troop deployment in Liberia before Taylor’s departure (as) this will enhance his ability to remain in power,” the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd) said in a statement.
”Any troops deployed before the departure of Taylor must be prepared for a firefight,” it warned.
On Sunday, Liberia’s deputy chief of staff General Benjamin Yeaten said that loyalist forces had been put on ”maximum alert” on all fronts following attacks by two rebel groups.
”Our troops are on the highest level of alert. For the last four days we have increased the level of security,” he said, adding that they were bracing for another rebel offensive on the seaside capital of Monrovia.
But Chayee Doe, deputy president of Lurd, said: ”We have no plans to attack the capital, but if they continue to attack us we will fight back.”
The Lurd launched its most audacious offensive on Monrovia last month, fighting its way to the heart of the city before pulling back to the edges ahead of the ceasefire.
Soon after the truce was inked, rebels and government forces accused each other of breaking the accord but the Lurd later declared a unilateral ceasefire to prevent the already catastrophic humanitarian situation in Monrovia from worsening.
Tens of thousands of people who fled fighting between the rebels and government troops are living rough in Monrovia amid an acute shortage of food, drinking water, medicines and health facilities.
Several issues have complicated efforts to bring peace to Liberia, which two years after the end of the civil war in 1997 plunged into fresh conflict as Lurd took up arms against Taylor.
Ecowas on Wednesday announced its intention to quickly send up to 1 500 soldiers to Monrovia, where a US military team arrived last week to assess the humanitarian and security needs. The United States has so far refused to bow to international demands led by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and France to lead the peacekeeping force, and US President George Bush has called for Taylor to stand down as a first step to bringing peace to Liberia.
Taylor, however, has insisted that the Sierra Leone war crimes charges against him be dropped before he quits and takes up Nigeria’s asylum offer.
And the Liberian government and the rebels have different ideas about who should lead the interim government after Taylor’s exit.
Lurd has proposed that it should head the caretaker administration but Taylor has said, under Liberia’s constitution, that role should go to current Vice President Moses Blah. – Sapa-AFP