Johannesburg — It has been another busy and bloody week in Liberia. For the second time in ten days, rebels seeking to overthrow President Charles Taylor attempted to storm the capital Monrovia.
The effort failed, but the fighting claimed an estimated 500 lives and left the city overflowing with tens of thousands of displaced people. By Friday, the main rebel faction, Liberians for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd), had called off its offensive and agreed to a ceasefire, following intense negotiations with West African mediators in Ghana. The Liberian government then agreed to observe the truce as well.
The week ended with an appeal on Saturday by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan for an international force to enforce the ceasefire and stop the killing. "The consequences of allowing the situation to spiral out of control are too terrible to contemplate," Annan said in a strongly worded appeal to the Security Council.
Commending regional efforts to end the war in Liberia, he said "broader international action is urgently needed to reverse Liberia's drift towards total disintegration." The immediate deployment of a highly trained and well-equipped multinational force, under the leadership of a member state, is required, he said.
Annan's appeal was endorsed by a Security Council delegation currently making an eight-day, seven-nation West African tour, led by Britain's UN ambassador, Sir Jeremy Greenstock. In a meeting Sunday in Abuja with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, Council members agreed to support the plan by the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) to dispatch a 5000-member peacekeeping force.
"We need material support and participation of some of the members of the Security Council, especially the United States of America," Ecowas Secretary General Mohammed Ibn Chambas said following the meeting.
Public calls for a leading American role have come from a number of governments, including Britain and France. U.S. ties to Liberia date back more than a century, when freed American slaves settled there, and the country served as a staunch ally throughout the Cold War. French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, on a visit to South Africa, urged Washington to exert leadership, as he said France and Britain had done to help end civil conflicts in their former colonies, Cote d'Ivoire and Sierra Leone, where unrest was linked to the war in Liberia.
On Thursday, in an address to a U.S.-Africa business conference that previewed the themes of his upcoming trip to Africa, U.S. President George W. Bush called on Liberian President Charles Taylor to stand down "so that his country can be spared further bloodshed." The following day, thousands of Liberians besieged the American embassy in Monrovia, pleading for American troops to act as a buffer force to safeguard civilians caught up in the clashes between rebel and government troops. Asked on Friday whether any decision on U.S. intervention had been taken, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: "Whether that's necessary or appropriate, I don't know at this point."
Throughout the week, the embattled Liberian leader, who earlier this month had offered to step down "if Charles Taylor is the problem," insisted he intends to remain in office until his term ends in January. But he, too, called on the American government to step in and help end the fighting.
"I think the US ought to come now, using my strength, my popularity and my legitimacy and work to bring peace in Liberia," Taylor told reporters Saturday on a field visit to loyalist government troops. He said "this government is interested in working with Washington on resolving this problem in the continued promotion of democracy".
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
On Friday the Liberian peace talks in Ghana were adjourned for a week. The negotiators said they needed to study the new situation in Liberia and pointed to the fact that neither the government nor the rebels had respected an earlier ceasefire agreed on June 17.
Led by Ghana, whose president currently chairs Ecowas, the regional grouping, West African peace brokers have been trying to bring an end to the conflict, which has spread unrest through a troubled and unstable region. The Ecowas peacekeeping force is slated to go to Liberia once fighting has ended.
Observers describe Taylor, a former Liberian rebel leader who launched the first seven-year civil war in 1989, as a poisonous regional rogue, implicated in a number of conflicts in West Africa. He is currently wanted by the United Nations Special Court across the border in Sierra Leone. But he has demanded that the indictment for war crimes be dropped if he is to make good on his promise to step down in January.
