Liberia’s new president says it is crucial the crisis in neighbouring war-divided Côte d’Ivoire be resolved soon, adding the conflict there threatens peace in her own country.
”Liberia’s peace is fragile,” Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf said in an interview on Saturday, one of her first since being sworn in Monday as Africa’s first democratically elected female president. ”If the situation is not resolved, then Liberia’s own peace is threatened.”
Côte d’Ivoire was shaken by four days of violent street riots this week that brought the country’s main city, Abidjan, to a standstill. Militant supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo hurled stones and fire bombs at United Nations troops, forcing them to flee several bases in western Côte d’Ivoire and evacuate staff.
About 10 000 UN and French peacekeepers are deployed to help keep the peace in Côte d’Ivoire, split between a rebel-held north and a loyalist-south since rebels launched a failed 2002 coup bid.
Liberia is struggling to recover from its own civil war, which began in 1989 when Liberian rebels led by Charles Taylor invaded from Côte d’Ivoire in 1989. The fighting left 200 000 dead and displaced half of Liberia’s three million people before ending in 2003 after Taylor resigned in the face of a rebel advance.
Conflicts in West Africa have frequently spilled across borders.
Gbagbo’s government was accused of supporting rebels during Liberia’s war, and Liberian combatants have fought in western Côte d’Ivoire during that country’s conflict. Thousands of refugees have also shuttled across the two nations’ shared borders to escape fighting on either side over the years.
Those issues were on the agenda when Johnson-Sirleaf met Gbagbo in late November — on her first foreign trip after winning a heated presidential run-off against soccer star George Weah.
The Harvard-educated former finance minister said she spoke to Gbagbo about cross-border activity and both sides agreed to monitor it. But she said that ”since that time, the situation has deteriorated” in Côte d’Ivoire.
Johnson-Sirleaf inherited a nation that is among the world’s poorest — ranked 206th in terms of per-capita income out of 208 countries on 2004 World Bank list despite its wealth in diamonds and timber.
Jump-starting the nation’s ruined economy will not be easy. Salary arrears for some civil servants go back as far as 14 months, totalling $20-million, Johnson-Sirleaf said. That’s a quarter of the national Budget.
Johnson-Sirleaf said she spent her first week in office soaking up political ”survival tips” from fellow African leaders who cautioned her to scale down the high expectations of her people, who have seen little but war and widespread corruption for a quarter-century.
Taking office in Liberia, Johnson-Sirleaf joins a male-dominated club of African heads of state, many of whom are known as ”Big Men” — powerful leaders who have ruled for decades through coups, patronage and, more recently, elections.
Johnson-Sirleaf said several African leaders warned that her ”star power” as the continent’s first female head of state would fade. She said they urged her to keep hopes for foreign aid in check and look instead to regional leaders for help.
Johnson-Sirleaf’s first foreign trip as president took her to Gabon on Thursday for the inauguration of Omar Bongo, who has ruled his own oil-rich nation for 38 years.
Johnson-Sirleaf said Bongo advised her that the international community was fickle, saying its attention — and aid — can ”’quickly shift … as soon as the next novelty appears”’.
Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo echoed the comments. ”’The international community will want you to take all these bold actions,”’ she recalled Obasanjo telling her. ”’So be cautious, be careful. Do what you can do, tell them what you cannot do.”’
Sitting in a chair on the fourth floor of the executive mansion as rubbish from Monday’s inaugural party was burning in a corner of the presidential grounds, Johnson-Sirleaf also conceded she would need to manage her people’s high expectations.
A popular campaign promise she made to electrify the capital in six months will have to be clarified next week: power will only be restored to part of Monrovia, Johnson-Sirleaf said, not all of it. — Sapa-AP