Liberia’s foreign minister has said former president Charles Taylor no longer wields any influence in his homeland, dismissing reports that the exiled former warlord has been calling his supporters back home as ”media allegations”.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Friday, Foreign Minister Lewis Brown urged the United Nations Security Council to drop sanctions imposed against Taylor’s government, saying the measures hurt its economy and the peace process.
Brown, who met with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on Friday, said the West African country is firmly committed to peace, and that skirmishes between rebels and government forces should stop once UN peacekeepers are deployed across Liberia.
Taylor, who led an insurgency in 1989 that plunged Liberia into 14 years of conflict, resigned from the presidency on August 11 and took exile in the southern Nigerian jungle town of Calabar under international pressure following three months of sieges on the capital that killed at least 1 000 civilians.
Taylor’s vice-president, Moses Blah, now leads an interim government that is scheduled to be replaced on October 14 by a power-sharing government under a peace deal signed by rebels and the government on August 18.
But in recent weeks, Liberian authorities and UN diplomats have said Taylor is still interfering in Liberia. Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo has warned Taylor he is violating conditions of asylum by intervening.
European Union officials have said Taylor remained in daily telephone contact with Blah and others in Liberia, although the new president, in an apparent reference to Taylor’s attempts to retain control in Liberia, announced last week that government officials who heed directions from people living outside Liberia will be fired.
Brown said Taylor has the right to call home, but said he no longer has any influence.
”Frankly I don’t know how much control Mr Taylor can muster from Calabar, Nigeria. I have not paid much serious attention to media allegations of Mr Taylor making phone calls to Monrovia.”
Brown, a former top aide to Taylor and a key negotiator for his government in the peace talks that led to Taylor’s exit, said Taylor does have friends and relatives in Liberia.
”Whoever he calls, that’s his prerogative. The government will be judged by what the government does,” said Brown, who was in New York for the UN general assembly ministerial meeting. ”The business of the country cannot be linked [to] or stopped by Mr Taylor.
”I think the press and members of the international community can help that process [for peace] by keeping the focus on the direction of peace. I think to continue to draw us to Mr Taylor is to attempt to tick the clock back into times,” he added.
Rebels took up arms against Taylor in 1999, two years after he was elected president amid threats of more bloodshed. Rebels laid siege to Monrovia in June.
Taylor is also sought by a UN-Liberian war crimes court for his support of a vicious rebel movement in the West African nation of Sierra Leone, but Nigeria has made no move to hand him over.
The UN took over peacekeeping on Wednesday from a 3 500-member West African force deployed since August. The UN force is to build to 15 000 strong.
Brown said the rebels are committed to the peace process despite the continuing violence in the countryside and the new fighting in Monrovia this week.
”In all fairness to them they have been making efforts also to stay with the agreement. We have no evidence that that is not the case. If the skirmishes in the interior of the country are being referred to as a lack of goodwill, then that is unfair,” he added.
Brown said he asked Annan about ending the Security Council sanctions, including trade sanctions and an arms embargo, which he said ”could undermine the efforts of peace”.
”No country wants to invest in a country that is under sanctions from the UN. So we need investments into Liberia to get us away from these extremely high rates of unemployment, which catalyse social unrest and political instability,” he said. — Sapa-AP