Embattled Liberian President Charles Taylor will hand over power to his deputy next Monday, President Thabo Mbeki said on Tuesday. ”President Taylor will leave Liberia after the installation of that vice-president on Monday,” Mbeki told reporters in Pretoria.
Taylor would travel to Nigeria.
Mbeki said Taylor called him on Monday to state his intention of stepping down to make way for a government of national unity in Liberia.
Meanwhile, West African peacekeepers were on Tuesday to build up their strength at Liberia’s main airport in preparation for a risky mission to bring stability and humanitarian aid to its war-torn capital Monrovia.
After the arrival of a 300-strong Nigerian advance guard at Robertsfield Airport on Monday was greeted with joy by hundreds of war-weary civilians, the newly formed Ecomil force’s next task is to secure the city itself.
There they will face the much harder challenge of securing the delivery of food and medical aid to the 200 000 displaced Liberian non-combattants sheltering in the beleaguered capital, which has been under siege since June 5.
Before the troops can begin to do that, helicopters must ferry in more men and equipment from UN bases in neighbouring Sierra Leone. Military sources said it would be eight days before the advance force is at full strength.
Around 350 men, half of the vanguard unit, had deployed late on Monday. The force complement of 3 000 to 5 000 men could take up to a month to deploy.
Meanwhile scattered bursts of gun and rocket fire could still be heard in the city, despite promises from both President Charles Taylor’s forces and the rebels to respect a ceasefire deal.
A family of three was seriously injured when a rocket hit their home in the West Point area of the city, a spit of overcrowded land packed with tin shacks running parallel to the battle front, health worker Patrick Broh said.
”They were badly injured. It came from the rebel side,” said an Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF — Doctors Without Borders) official.
”There was small arms fire this morning. One woman was shot in the neck and another woman and her baby were hurt,” he added.
Mark, a 19-year-old serving with a pro-Taylor militia dubbed the Jungle Lions, said that most of the firing was now linked to looting, and often involved clashes by former allies on the government side.
”The fighters want to steal things to sell to the peacekeepers when they arrive,” he said. ”It is good that they (Ecomil) are here. They should move into the city, to bring stability and peace.”
The front lines in the nearly five-year-old war are still tense.
”We have intelligence information that Taylor’s men are hauling supplies and troops to prepare another attack. It might come today or tonmorrow,” said a rebel commander known as Jacob.
Jacob claimed that even though the city-centre flashpoint where two bridges link the loyalist-held town centre to the rebel-held port was quiet, Taylor was plotting to open a second front north of the city.
He also denied that any rocket fire had come from his lines overnight, insisting that his men were observing a ceasefire.
Taylor’s defence minister, Daniel Chea, said simply: ”There is fresh fighting. I am awaiting a report.”
With fighting apparently subsiding — and both sides insisting that they will follow a west African-brokered plan to bring to an end Liberia’s latest civil war — Taylor’s role was once again centre stage.
The former warlord has promised the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) that he will step down on Monday, August 11, but it was not yet clear whether he will quit Liberia and go into exile as he has been asked.
In Washington, the White House and the State Department said Taylor, who has been charged with war crimes by a court in Sierra Leone, ought to leave Liberia and face the charges to secure progress in the peace process.
At a news conference in Rome on Monday, Lurd leader Sekou Damate Conneh — head of the self-styled Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy — said his forces would leave Monrovia as soon as the peace force is in place.
Lurd, along with a splinter rebel faction, now controls around four-fifths of the country, an impoverished land of 111 400 square kilometres of bush, swamp and tropical forest on Africa’s Atlantic coast.
But they have proved unable or unwilling to capture the capital Monrovia, a port city lying on a string of islands and peninsulas, now teeming with around 200 000 refugees, desperate for food and clean water.
The Ecomil mission has UN backing and for the first month of its existence the force will receive logistical support from the UN force in Liberia, Unamsil, but thereafter it will rely on international funding. – Sapa-AFP