Rebels besieging Monrovia will withdraw immediately from the Liberian capital once west African peacekeepers arrive on Monday, rebel leader Sekou Damate Conneh said in Rome.
”We are prepared to receive the peacekeepers in Liberia as soon as they deploy in the city and the port to save the civilians there. We are prepared to withdraw immediately,” the head of Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd) told reporters.
As a first wave of Nigerian troops that will form the bulk of a peacekeeping force for Liberia arrived on Monday outside Monrovia, US Ambassador John Blaney said he believed the rebels would pull back.
Conneh also called on the international community ”to put pressure on Charles Taylor to leave Liberia because he has promised to leave on several occasions but he never left.”
He accused Taylor’s forces of shelling the civilian population and diplomatic headquarters in the Liberian capital.
Taylor has vowed to leave the country on August 11, and Conneh said the rebels would leave it to the peacekeepers to ensure that he does so.
”If Taylor does not leave, the international community has forces on the ground and they can use them.”
He said later that his forces, which have been fighting against Taylor’s government troops for almost five years, would ”begin disarming as soon as we have an interim government.”
He pledged that Lurd would also disband and disarm its child soldiers.
”We want all our commanders to disarm all the child soldiers in our camps,” he said, claiming that the rebels had even forced child soldiers to attend specially established schools behind the front lines during the conflict.
The Lurd leader is in Rome at the head of a six-person delegation as the guest of the Sant’Egidio Community, which is involved in negotiations over Liberia’s civil war.
Conneh said his organisation would not contest the presidency: ”Lurd proposes that the transitional presidency should be chosen from among the political parties and civil society organisations”.
The rebel leader said his forces ”have the capacity to overrun Charles Taylor but we had to move slowly because of the humanitarian problems” for the civilian population who have been trapped by the fighting and is badly in need of humanitarian assistance.
Blaney, speaking at Robertsfield Airport as he welcomed an advance party of Nigerian peacekeepers, said: ”I believe the Lurd has accepted my proposal to pull back to the Po River.”
The Po flows into the Atlantic just north of Monrovia. If Lurd were to retreat to this point, it would allow the arriving ECOMIL peacekeepers to take control of the city’s rebel-held harbour to bring in much needed food aid. – Sapa-AFP