Washington, DC — For the first time since Charles Taylor became president of Liberia six years ago, the French foreign ministry has held official consultations with the leader of Liberia's principal opposition party, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
The meeting in Paris coincided with a five-nation tour of West Africa last week by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers, a former Dutch prime minister, who said on Sunday that Taylor bears major blame for the worsening situation throughout the region and should be forced out of office.
Lubbers' remarks, made in Guinea's capital Conakry at the end of his journey, are the sharpest condemnation of Taylor to date by a high-ranking international official. Taylor failed to show up for a scheduled meeting with Lubbers in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, to discuss the deteriorating refugee situation in the country.
Sirleaf was received at the Quai d'Orsay or foreign ministry in Paris by Nathalie de la Palme, senior advisor on Africa to Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, and Bruno Joubert, director for Africa and Indian Ocean.
In a telephone interview, Sirleaf told AllAfrica that the officials assured her that French policy towards Liberia is now changing. An investment banker and former Liberian finance minister who also headed the Africa region at the United Nations Development Programme, Sirleaf was Taylor's chief opponent in the 1997 elections that followed nearly seven years of civil war in the country.
Another sign of a shifting French stance came earlier this month when the United Nations Security Council unanimously agreed to add timber exports to the arms, diamonds and travel sanctions against Taylor's regime that were first adopted two years ago. France, along with China - both major purchasers of Liberian tropical wood - had previously opposed the timber embargo. The Council extended existing sanctions for 12 months and set July 7th as the start date for the new timber ban.
Mounting evidence that the exports have been financing illegal weapons purchases led to the decision to support the ban, according to Paris-based newsletter on African affairs La Lettre du Continent, quoting a Quai d'Orsay official. Taylor's links with French companies date back to the early 1990s, when he first financed his rebel movement by selling timber from areas of the country controlled by his insurgents.
A 60-page report released this month by Global Witness, a London-based NGO, documents far-reaching Liberian government involvement in international arms deals. The report identifies logging companies allied with Taylor as prime facilitators of illegal weapons shipments, using the ports of Buchanan and Harper, from which the timber is exported. Global Witness also accuses Taylor of financing two Ivorian rebel groups operating along Cote d'Ivoire's border with Liberia in order to destabilize the Ivorian government, install one "more favourable to Liberia," and "create an escape route" should Taylor need to flee his country.
Sirleaf said the French have come to believe there can be no solution to the continuing crisis in Cote d'Ivoire, a former French colony where France still has extensive interests, without a resolution of conflict in Liberia.
The call for a regional approach in West Africa has come from a number of quarters. The International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank, in a new report labeling Liberia "the eye of the regional storm," said that for peace to come to the area "there must be effective coordination among the key external players," specifically the United States, United Kingdom and France, as well as the United Nations, the European Union and the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas).
Currently, there are British troops stationed in Sierra Leone, a former British colony that shares Liberia's northwestern border, and French soldiers in Cote d'Ivoire, which shares a long border with Liberia's eastern flank. In Guinea, to the north, the United States has operated a military assistance program that trained 800 Guinea soldiers last year. According to La Lettre du Continent, U.S. training extended to Liberia's newest rebel movement, known as Model, a charge the State Department has flatly denied.
Peace talks initiated by an international contact group are scheduled for June 2nd in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, chaired by former Nigerian head of state Abdulsalami Abubakar and Ghana President John Agyekum Kufuor. The contact group includes Ghana, Nigeria, Morocco, the African Union, the European Union, the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) and the United Nations, along with three permanent Security Council members - Britain, France and the United States. A government delegation headed by Taylor is slated for two days of discussions with armed rebel factions, followed by deliberations involving political parties and civil society representatives aimed at establishing an interim administration representative of the competing forces.
If Paris is adopting a regional approach, rather than one based largely on historical ties, it remains less clear what action Washington is prepared to take.
Lubbers, who has headed the UN refugee agency since early 2001, is appealing for a larger U.S. role. "If the British felt responsible in Sierra Leone, and the French in Ivory Coast, I can't imagine that the U.S. doesn't feel some responsibility in Liberia," Lubbers told the Associated Press.
The United States relationship with Liberia is widely seen around the world as special, akin to the colonial ties that link other African nations to European powers. The country was established by freed American slaves and a few African Americans who had been born free who arrived in what is now Monrovia in 1847 on a U.S. Navy ship supported by grants from the U.S. Treasury. Thousands of Americo-Liberians (as these settlers came to be called) have been educated in the United States, including 16 of the 19 men who have been president there. During the Cold War, Liberia was a leading U.S. aid recipient in Africa and a staunch ally.
Since Liberia's civil war began in late 1989, when Taylor crossed into the north with a small band of armed rebels, successive administrations in Washington have shied away from asserting American leadership in resolving the conflict.
In an address to a Liberian pro-democracy meeting outside Washington in March, Pamela Bridgewater, U.S. deputy assistant Secretary of State, said the Bush administration "will not wait much longer" for the Liberian government to change its behavior. "The cost may be great, but the cost of doing nothing will undoubtedly be even greater for the Government of Liberia, for the Government of the United States, and for the international community, and most importantly, for you, the citizens of Liberia," she said.
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Last month, Alan W. White, an American who serves as chief investigator for the Special Court for Sierra Leone, told AllAfrica that Taylor has been defying the court by refusing to hand over indicted criminals, And last week, the court's prosecutor told the Washington Post's Douglas Farah that Taylor had ordered the murder earlier this month of Sam Bockarie, one of the indictees and a long-time Taylor ally who played a leading role in the horror of the Sierra Leone conflict. The Liberian government has said Bockarie died resisting arrest but so far they have not released his body. His wife and children who lived in Monrovia are reportedly missing as well.
The prosecutor, David Crane, a former Pentagon official, also accused Taylor of "harboring terrorists from the Middle East, including al Qaeda and Hezbollah."
Taylor has been accused of backing Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front, whose leadership now faces prosecution and could face indictment himself.
But this is not the first time Taylor has felt the heat of heightened international scrutiny. Almost a year ago, Farah reported that the Liberian leader, who had seemed to be "out of options" in early 2002 as sanctions tightened all around him, had maneuvered a rebound by selling off timber rights in Sapo National Park to Oriental Timber Company of Hong Kong, thus providing the funds needed to pay disgruntled commandos who had threatened to oust him when they weren't getting paid.
"It's getting really rough for Taylor now," said one U.S. official closely monitoring the situation, "but I don't imagine he has played all his cards just yet."
