Liberia’s embattled President Charles Taylor will step down in line with a peace formula to end a four-year civil war but is under ”tremendous pressure” not to go into exile, his spokesperson said on Wednesday.
”The president will leave office but he is under tremendous pressure from his partisans not to leave the country,” said presidential spokesperson Vanii Passewe.
Asked whether Taylor would stay on in Liberia, possibly under the protection of armed guards, Passewe said: ”I am not saying that, I am just saying there is this pressure.”
Passewe recalled a meeting between Taylor and his supporters on Saturday, where they implored him to remain in the country, singing a ditty that went: ”You can step down but you cannot leave.”
At the same rally, Cyril Allen, chair of the ruling National Patriotic Party (NPP) had said: ”The president cannot go into exile as he is a traditional chief and traditional chiefs do not depart from their country.”
Taylor, a former warlord who played a key role in an earlier seven-year conflict in Liberia which ended in 1997 — the year he was elected — recently accepted an asylum offer from Nigeria after agreeing to quit under a west African brokered peace deal.
Taylor, who now controls only a fifth of his war-ravaged country has not however given a date for his departure and has stressed he will not leave until an international peacekeeping force arrives to ensure a smooth transition in Liberia.
Taylor has also been charged with war crimes by a United Nations-backed court in Sierra Leone for his role in that country’s decade-long civil war, which was marked by extremes of brutality.
The composition of an interim government in Liberia is now in a logjam with the Liberian government and the main rebel group Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd) disputing who should lead the caretaker administration.
Senator Mohamed Dukuly, the leader of the Liberian government delegation at ongoing peace talks in Ghana has said Vice President Moses Blah would head the caretaker government.
”Our constitution says that in the absence of the president the deputy takes over,” he said on Tuesday. ”We are not here to rewrite constitutions.”
But Lurd representative Kabineh Ja’neh said the rebels would resume fighting if this happened.
”If Moses Blah is chosen as the acting head of state, that is a declaration of war and there will be street to street combats and we will walk out of the talks,” he said.
The rebels have also demanded that Taylor leave the war-torn west African country before an international peacekeeping force deploys there.
”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 rebels said last week, threatening ”any troops deployed before the departure of Taylor” with a firefight. – Sapa-AFP