President Charles Taylor on Thursday said he resented massive international pressure on him to leave Liberia, but reiterated a pledge to step down and hand over power to his deputy.
”Why are people in so much of a hurry for me to leave my homeland?” Taylor asked in an interview with CNN as west African peacekeepers began patrolling his war-ravaged capital Monrovia.
”We are not here to play games,” said Taylor, flanked by vice President Moses Blah, who is slated to take over as president on Monday.
”I have it in writing physically. The vice president will be sworn in on Monday. Here he stands right here,” the former warlord told CNN in the interview monitored in Paris.
”This morning I was on the phone with President [John] Kufuor of Ghana, a few days ago I was on the phone with [Nigerian President Olusegun] Obasanjo. … I can assure you that what I have said to Obasanjo and Kufuor this morning will happen.”
As for when Taylor will actually leave Liberia, he said: ”My movement and what I do is a matter of security… I can assure the world that my words that I have given will be carried out, and just watch and see.”
Taylor, who cancelled a planned address to the Liberian Parliament on Thursday in which he was to formally confirm that he is stepping down, wants immunity from prosecution before a United Nations-backed court in neighbouring Sierra Leone, which has indicted him for war crimes.
His government has asked the International Court of Justice in The Hague to intervene over an indictment for his role in atrocities committed during Sierra Leone’s civil war, which ended in 2001.
Taylor’s departure from the county has been a key demand to end the fighting by rebels who have been besieging Monrovia for two months.
South African President Thabo Mbeki said on Monday that Taylor had promised to leave for Nigeria on Monday or Tuesday. – Sapa-AFP