Washington, DC — While attention is focused on peacekeeping efforts designed to end the conflict in Liberia, a parallel peace process involving political parties and citizens groups is seeking agreement on the country's political future. The current president, Charles Taylor, has consented under pressure to relinquish power and accept an asylum offer from Nigeria, but he has refused to set a timetable for his departure from the country.
Convened by West African leaders at the beginning of June, the talks in Ghana have resulted in agreement on several key issues. But participants have not reach consensus on two major matters - the structure of the interim administration that will assume power when Taylor leaves and the choice of a leader to head the transition.
The talks are taking place under the auspices of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), with former Nigerian Head of State Abdulsalami Abubakar as chief negotiator. After a first week of drama, which included the announcement of the indictment of Taylor by the United Nations-backed Special Court in Sierra Leone and a flare-up of fighting that brought rebel forces to the outskirts of Monrovia, discussions have proceeded quietly.
Participants include representatives of 17 Liberian political parties, the Taylor government and the two warring factions, MODEL (Movement for Democracy in Liberia) and LURD (Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy). Non-governmental organizations, including religious bodies and women's and professional groups, are also taking part.
According to Conmany Wesseh, a veteran of Liberian peace negotiations, who is currently executive director of the Center for Democratic Empowerment in Abidjan, the political parties and warring factions and government have not been able to come up with a formula for the interim arrangement. "There is no agreement on the structure of the transitional government, and there is no agreement on the process of selection of the leadership," he said in a telephone interview from Accra.
Another participant in the talks, Dusty Wolokollie, a member of the Liberian Peoples Party (LPP), said MODEL and LURD are insisting on having an interim president and two vice-presidents, one for each of the armed factions. The recently concluded peace agreement for the Democratic Republic of Congo serves as a model for this approach. President Joseph Kabila's new government has four vice-presidents, one for each rival rebel movement and one representing civil society. The major difference is that Kabila has been designated to head a two-year transition while Taylor has been asked, and has agreed, to vacate office.
Kabineh Janeh, who heads the LURD delegation in the Ghana talks, said his movement is insistent that the interim leadership not be limited to veteran political figures. "It is important that the government be open to allow a wider participation so that the cause roots of the war be extracted once for all," he said.
In Accra, each of the political parties and armed factions, as well as the government delegation, was asked to submit a written transition plan. The Ecowas secretariat, headed by Mohamed Ibn Chambas, a former Ghanaian government official, reviewed these drafts to identify areas of agreement as well as issues on which differences remain.
Participants say there is general consensus on an 18 to 24-month timetable between the creation of the interim administration and a transfer to an democratically elected government. They have also agreed that the president during the transition would not be eligible to compete for the post in the election.
The parties apparently also agree that the interim legislative assembly should include representatives from each political party and from civic groups and warring factions, as well as from each of the counties. What remains to be settled, according to Wolokollie, is "how many people each warring faction would nominate and how many people would come from the outgoing government."
One major unresolved question is the selection of the interim president. Representatives from Taylor's government have been calling for a "constitutional" transition, meaning that Taylor would relinquish power to his vice-president, Moses Blah. Most of the other participants reject that approach, saying that the Taylor government, including the vice president, has lost any claim to legitimacy through its actions.
Togbana Tipoteh, standard-bearer and chairman of Liberian Peoples Party and a contender for the interim presidency, said that, notwithstanding the apparent confusion, negotiators are close to hammering out an agreement on most important issues. "There are documents with various approaches being circulated and I am sure the final details can be worked out in the shortest possible time," he said.
While refusing to provide details on the negotiations or speculate on his own prospects, Tipoteh said: "the gaps are much narrower than people may think." He gave as an example the fact that "all 17 political parties have one secretariat and we all consult and agree on major issues, and I think that is an important factor in these talks."
As for as the criteria for the interim presidency, he said: "the person elected should be a unifier, one that can bring everyone on board and reconcile the opposing views and parties to move the country forward."
According to many of the participants, the four names that have emerged most prominently for the presidency are Tipoteh, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of the Unity Party (UP), Jydi Bryant of the Liberian Action Party (LAP) and Theresa Lee Sherman, a teacher and member of the Mano River Women Peace Initiative. Sirleaf, a banker who served as finance minister in the 1970s, was jailed by former president Samuel K. Doe after she was the largest vote-getter as a senatorial candidate in the controversial 1985 election in which Doe claimed victory. In 1997, after serving as assistant secretary general of the United Nations, she ran for president but was defeated handily by Taylor.
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With the ceasefire holding and the arrival of West African peacekeepers expected soon, many Liberians are calling for the talks to be moved to Monrovia so that the process can include broader participation. Some also are advocating "as short a transition as possible," in the words of Charles Brumskine, an attorney and former Liberian senator who returned home from the United States earlier this year to contest the cancelled 2003 presidential election.
Brumskine believes true progress towards economic reconstruction and political conciliation can only occur once the transition is concluded and an elected government takes office.
Meanwhile, in Monrovia, Taylor is said to be preparing his exit, meeting with close friends and associates to map out the future. Asked why the president has delayed his departure, one of his close advisors said: "The president has agreed to leave and he will leave and as soon as peacekeepers start to come." The advisor cited the example of former President Samuel Doe, who refused to depart the country in 1990, as fighting intensified, and was eventually captured and brutally murdered by a rebel force in the capital. "This is what the president is trying to avoid. Other than that, he is ready to leave, and he would go tonight if the peacekeepers show up now," the adviser said.
