Accra — With fighting intensifying in Liberia, the peace conference that opened here last week has taken a pause while West African leaders seek to broker a truce between the warring parties.
On Monday, Ghana's Minister of Foreign Affairs Nana Akufo-Addo and Dr. Mohamed Ibn Chambas, executive secretary of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) left Accra in search of a ceasefire. Chambas said they would stop in the Sierra Leonean capital Freetown and spend the night in Conakry, Guinea, before heading to Monrovia Tuesday.
The peace conference had been scheduled to convene Friday in Akosombo, 40 miles from the capital Accra, but the talks were postponed to allow more participants to arrive. A delegation from one of the Liberian rebel groups - the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (Model) - finally reached the conference site Monday morning. However, Model says its political leaders are still on route from the United States and are expected here in a day or so.
A leader of the other main warring group, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd), Kabined Janeh, traveled to Liberia as part of the peace initiative.
Many Liberians here are asking that Ecowas dispatch troops to Monrovia and impose a ceasefire before things get out of hand. But West African states have limited resources and military capacity, and Ecowas seems to be looking to the warring parties for cooperation before intervention is tried again. Prior to his departure from Accra, Chambas said that there would be no further talks until a ceasefire is secured and that the proposed West African peacekeeping force could not be deployed until there is a cessation of hostilities on the ground.
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Following the indictment last week of Liberian President Charles Taylor by the United Nations-back Special Court in Sierra Leone, the rebel offensive heightened. With their eyes set on the Executive Mansion, the rival forces may be hard to persuade to down their weapons. "We are back to 1990, with warring factions killing and looting and innocent people dying," said one conference participant," referring to the chaos that engulfed the capital before a West African force intervened.
But Monrovia is more populated now and already the city is without running water and is short on food. New eruptions of fighting in 1992 and 1996 destroyed the little infrastructure that was left and rebuilding has yet to begin. Civilian suffering is widespread, along with growing anxiety.
Meanwhile, in Akosombo, consultations among Liberian political leaders have continued. Liberians in America are taking part in the discussions, with Rainey Jackson and Mohamed Kromah representing Union of Liberian Associations in the Americas (ULAA) and Nohn Kiaudui representing the Movement for Democratic Change in Liberia (MDCL). Liberians students in exile are also represented in the talks by a group based in Accra.
On Monday, a cross-section of political parties, led by Togbana Tipoteh, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Charles Brumskine, signed a petition calling on Taylor to resign, as he said he might be willing to do when he addressed the opening session of the peace conference last Wednesday. In a CNN interview, the Liberian president said he was ready to step aside but would not do so with guns pointed at his head.
