POLITICS-LIBERIA: Ghana Hosts Talks to End Civil War

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Abdullah Dukuly

MONROVIA, May 28 2003 (IPS) - Liberia’s belligerents will meet in Ghana next week for the much-heralded peace talks designed to end the country’s three-year-old civil war.

The conference opens in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, on Jun. 4, with several heads of state attending. The venue will then be transferred some 96 kilometres away to Ghana’s resort city of Akosombo, where participants will deliberate for an unspecified period, according to Ghana’s ambassador to Liberia, Kwame Amoa-Awa.

Main items on the agenda remain scanty. But political observers believe cease-fire and disarmament, deployment of peacekeeping troops and the formation of an interim government after President Charles Taylor’s tenure expires in January will dominate the talks.

The conference is being facilitated by a New York-based think-tank, the International Contact Group on Liberia (ICGL), of which the Ghanaian envoy is the local representative. And it will be brokered by the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

Former Nigerian military leader Abdulsalami Abubakar will mediate it on behalf of ECOWAS, said an ICGL statement made available to IPS this week.

"All the belligerents have expressed their willingness to attend the meeting," says Amoa-Awa.

He is referring to the government, the rebel Liberia United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), the one-month-old rebel group that is making rapid advances on government’s positions in the southeast.

The meeting comes amidst signs of heightening insecurity and the worsening humanitarian crisis in the country as rebels engage in fierce battles with the government.

"This worrying situation has dashed hopes for the October elections," says a civil servant in the capital Monrovia. "With mounting insecurity and intensified fighting around the country, it is clear that the government has an uncertain road ahead".

Rebel forces now control more than half of Liberia and appear to be driving hard towards the port city of Buchanan, 120 kilometres southeast of Monrovia.

On Monday, the U.S. Charge d’Affairs in Monrovia, Christopher Datta, urged U.S. citizens to leave Liberia in view of escalating fighting between the government and rebels.

There are speculations that as the Taylor administration near its end, a political formula will be worked out at Akosombo for an interim government to oversee the transition to a civil rule. The Taylor-led government is nearing its six-year term, paving the way for elections in October.

Taylor and his top officials are under U.N. sanctions and travel restriction for the guns-for-diamonds trade with rebels in neighbouring Sierra Leone. The U.N. is maintaining the sanctions – first slammed in 2001 – to deter the government from fuelling armed conflicts in neighbouring states.

ICGL urges Liberia to "comply fully with the demands of the U.N. Security Council in order for the sanction regime to be lifted as soon as possible". It also urges Liberia’s neighbours – Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire and Guinea – to "prevent their national territories from being used to undermine the peace process".

As the warlords and politicians gear up for the peace talks, there is no let up in the women’s anti-war protest launched one month ago. They have been keeping vigils, and leading peaceful marches to key government installations.

"We want to see our people living in refugee camps to come back safely to their villages so that we can begin the preparations for free and fair elections. We believe that it is only then that we can begin the healing process and go towards sustainable and lasting peace in Liberia," the coordinator of women’s action for peace, Laymah Gbowee said on Tuesday.

More than 10,000 civilians, fleeing the conflict zones, arrived in Monrovia on Sunday from the southeast where rebels have intensified their attacks against the government.

They now join tens of thousands of displaced people who face "an even greater humanitarian catastrophe as an average of 10 displaced persons die of hunger-related diseases each day due to lack of care for them", an aid worker told IPS this week.

The World Food Programme (WFP) and other non-governmental organisations (NGOs) say they are unable to deliver humanitarian relief supplies because of "security concerns".

So far, President Taylor continues to face pressures to resign. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Ruud Lubbers, who visited Liberia on May 14, said it would be "an illusion to think that the war would end without a power-sharing arrangement".

Fighting in 11 of Liberia’s 15 regions has affected half the country’s estimated three million people, according to the UNHCR. Liberia also hosts around 17,000 Sierra Leone refugees, at least 38,000 Ivorian refugees and nearly 44,000 returning Liberians who fled conflict in neighbouring Cote d’Ivoire. These too have been endangered by the fighting.

Roman Catholic Arch-Bishop Michael Francis hopes the talks in Akosombo will be the last one. "Liberians are fed up with conferences that often turn out to be meaningless," he says.

Liberia, founded by freed American slaves in 1847, has had 13 peace conferences, which brought chaos and death, as they were not built around complete disbarment and demobilisation of warring factions.