POLITICS-LIBERIA: Pressure Mounts on President Taylor to Resign

By Lansana Fofana Reprint | | Print |

Lansana Fofana

FREETOWN, Jul 3 2003 (IPS) - Any abrupt exit of President Charles Taylor could leave behind a power vacuum and plunge Liberia into chaos, warns a senior government official.

The official, Sam Jackson, said this week: "We do accept that President Taylor should quit the scene in order for peace to reign in our country, but this must be done in an orderly manner."

Jackson, Liberia’s Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs, was reacting to mounting pressure on the beleaguered Liberian leader to vacate the political scene as a way of resolving the bloody conflict, amicably.

Already, U.S. President George W. Bush has called on Taylor to abdicate his office and give peace a chance. "President Taylor must leave Liberia now. I have said this before and I am reiterating it again. Charles Taylor must quit now in order to end the suffering of the Liberian people," said Bush on Wednesday.

There is also mounting pressure on the Americans to lead a multi-national peacekeeping force for Liberia. But the Bush administration says it is considering the request, which was made by UN Sec-Gen Kofi Annan and West African leaders.

"The United States wants to see peace return to Liberia as quickly as possible and so Secretary of State Colin Powell is discussing the matter with UN Officials," a spokesperson for the Bush administration said Wednesday.

But whether the Americans would swiftly intervene in the form of deploying U.S. troops in Liberia is yet unclear.

A team of regional ceasefire monitors, led by Ghana, is due in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, Thursday, via Sierra Leone. Their mission is to verify whether or not the week-long unilateral cease-fire, declared by the main rebel movement, which calls itself Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), is holding.

Fighting between LURD and government forces ended about a week ago, after parts of the capital were devastated and 250,000 civilians displaced. The death toll from those bloody battles for control of Monrovia left more than 350 civilians dead.

ECOWAS Sec-Gen Mohammed Chambers has been in the vanguard for the intervention of "a Stabilisation Force" that will separate the warring sides and protect civilians. "We are appealing to the United States, which has traditional and historic ties, with Liberia to lead such a stabilisation force, Chambers said.

Leaders of the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have declared their willingness to contribute troops for such a mission, but when exactly they will move in troops is yet unclear.

At the moment, a fragile cease-fire holds in Monrovia. But plans by a UN Security Council delegation to visit Monrovia this week have been cancelled "because of security fears," according to a UN source.

While Taylor’s forces have beaten back the LURD insurgents from Monrovia, another warring faction calling itself Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) has started complaining of attacks on its positions by government forces.

A spokesperson for the group said Thursday that Taylor’s fighters have been attacking their positions, mainly in the east of the country. "We consider this a violation of the ceasefire and would be left with no alternative but to fight back, if Taylor’s forces do not stop attacking us," the MODEL spokesperson said in Ghana’s capital, Accra, where MODEL and Liberian government officials are due to renew peace talks aimed at ending the four-year conflict.

All indications are that President Taylor is in dire trouble. Apart from pressure from the home front, the wily Liberian leader is facing an indictment from the UN-backed special war crimes court which is sitting in neighbouring Sierra Leone, ironically not an ally of Taylor’s Liberia.

The beleaguered, but maverick, Liberian leader now has to work out his exit strategy. He has agreed to step down on condition that his indictment for "war crimes and violations of serious international humanitarian law is dropped.

Sources have intimated IPS that plans are being worked out by regional leaders that would see Taylor go into exile, possibly in Nigeria. The Nigerians say they are yet to be officially informed about such a matter.

A spokesperson for the Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said Wednesday: "We will consider any such request and do think we, as a regional power, should step in and help solve the Liberian crisis". She, however, fell short of saying that her government would provide President Taylor with sanctuary.

But a spokesperson for the office of the prosecutor of the war crimes court Tom Perriello said Wednesday that no deal will see Taylor’s indictment. "He has been indicted for committing war crimes and our mandate is to take him into custody and try him," Perriello added.

In spite of regional as well as international efforts to resolve the conflict in Liberia, no one knows when and how the crisis will end.