Liberia was set to acquire a new government on Tuesday to lead the war-ravaged west African state until general elections in 2005, as rebels promised to start disarming.
Temporary President Moses Blah is to hand over power to Gyude Bryant, a little-known businessman who arrived in Monrovia on Monday to a joyous welcome from thousands of Liberians chanting “We want peace, no more war.”
Bryant will preside over an interim administration made up of former loyalists of ousted president Charles Taylor, rebels, politicians and representatives of civil society.
On the eve of Bryant’s swearing-in before the national assembly, the rebels promised to start disarming voluntarily as soon as the handover was completed.
“Right after the inauguration ceremony, we will start volunteer disarmament,” said Sekou Damate Conneh, head of the rebel movement Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd), who will be part of the transition government.
“War is over, my last mission will be completed tomorrow with the induction ceremony,” he said.
Bryant, who is regarded as having no political ties, was chosen by the parties to the conflict to serve as president for a transitional period up to January 2006, and including elections in two years, under the terms of a peace accord signed in Accra in August.
The accord ended a four-year rebellion against Taylor, who was elected in 1997 after having sparked a civil war among warlords in 1989-90.
In a statement from his home in exile in Nigeria late on Monday, Taylor pledged to support the peace process.
“In this regard I urge all my partisans — supportive well wishers as well as armed combattants — to support the peace process. The war is over,” he said in the statement.
But Taylor had less conciliatory words for Jacques Klein, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s special representative in Liberia and the civilian head of the UN mission charged with rebuilding the shattered country.
“It’s said by one human that I’m a psychopath and only God knows what else. How sad. But, as always, I forgive this human as I forgive all others who say all manner of things about me,” he added, according to Paasewe.
Klein said last month that Taylor had threatened peace moves by telephoning his successor Moses Blah and seeking to prolong his influence in Liberia.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has reportedly warned Taylor not to interfere in Liberia’s fragile peace process.
African leaders set to attend Tuesday’s ceremony include the Ghanaian and Nigerian presidents John Kufuor and Olusegun Obasanjo and the president of the African Union Commission, Alpha Oumar Konare, a former president of Mali.
Security will be ensured by west African troops serving as the United Nations mission to Liberia (Minul), which began operations on October 1. – AFP