Nigeria will surrender ousted Liberian leader Charles Taylor for trial if that country asks, President Olusegun Obasanjo, Taylor’s host in exile, said on Tuesday.
Obasanjo has adamantly resisted surrendering Taylor on an existing indictment by a United Nations-backed court — but made it clear on Tuesday he would listen if Liberia itself asked.
Taylor has lived in exile in southern Nigeria since early August, when he fled, under international pressure, as rebels laid siege to his capital, Monrovia.
If Liberia’s new interim government decides it wants him to face charges there, ”then I believe he will understand sufficiently the need to go home”, Obasanjo told foreign reporters, speaking in an interview at his farm north of Lagos.
Asked what he would do if Taylor resisted, Obasanjo responded, ”I would persuade him.”
Liberia’s government has not specifically said it wanted Taylor for trial. Interim leader Gyude Bryant, appointed under an August 18 peace deal, has said he fears war-crimes trials would harm reconciliation in the country.
Taylor, a former rebel, launched Liberia into 14 years of conflict in 1989, when he led an initially small insurgency to overthrow the government.
Fighting has killed an estimated 250 000 Liberians since.
The UN indictment accuses Taylor of backing rebels in a vicious 10-year terror campaign in neighbouring Sierra Leone. The administration of United States President George Bush has disavowed moves by the US Congress to place rewards for Taylor’s surrender to the UN court.
The US Congress moves angered Obasanjo. His government earlier this month called the US-offered reward a threat to Nigeria’s sovereignty.
There were ”elements in the US who were well-meaning but misguided, misdirected and misinformed”, Obasanjo said on Tuesday, referring to the US push to capture Taylor.
”There was not enough communication even between the executive government and the legislature,” Obasanjo said of the US. ”But I believe the information gap has been filled.” — Sapa-AP