Johannesburg — Embattled Liberian leader Charles Taylor vowed Saturday to fight to the last man against a rebel assault as his armed opponents advanced and crossed a key bridge leading into the capital, Monrovia.
Taylor was talking tough. "We will fight street to street, house to house and we will defeat them," he warned, speaking from his Executive Mansion in the city. "I will stand and fight to the last man until they stop killing my own people."
Meanwhile, rebel leader Sekou Damate Konneh denied that his forces have taken the offensive. "We were provoked. Taylor has been attacking us every day," Konneh told AllAfrica by telephone from Conakry, capital of neighboring Guinea, which has backed his movement, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd).
Asked what instructions he had given to his forces in Monrovia, he said: "The boys are trying to maintain their position. I told them we are not going to hijack any government, but we have to keep the pressure on for Taylor to leave."
Reports from Monrovia say that rebel forces, using heavy bombardment, pierced key areas of the capital on Saturday and crossed St Paul's Bridge - the gateway to Monrovia, a mere 10km (six miles) outside the city.
News of the fighting sent thousands of desperate, displaced Liberians fleeing into Monrovia. The elderly, the young and the infirm were transported in wheelbarrows, as men and women piled their belongings on their heads and put children on their backs for another hurried evacuation.
But as the frontline edged towards the city, thousands of civilians, waving tree fronds and branches as symbols of peace, swarmed towards the battle lines in a spontaneous march demanding peace and chanting, "we want peace, we want peace." Many pleaded with the United States to "stop wasting time" and come to their aid.
Ecowas troops next week?
U.S. President George Bush has committed himself to the limited deployment of American troops, once Taylor has quit office. Bush told United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan on Monday that Washington would contribute to West African efforts to end the fighting in Liberia. The Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) has pledged to send a stabilization force to Liberia whose initial contingent of up to 1,500 men could arrive sometime next week, .
Ecowas chairman, Ghanaian President John Kufuor, told AllAfrica on July 12: "Ecowas has decided that a force of about 1,000 to 1,500 should be moved in... within two weeks."
Nigeria announced Saturday that it had dispatched an advance military fact-finding team to assess the situation in Liberia in preparation for the full deployment of the force. Nigerian army spokesman Colonel Emeka Onwuamaegbu told Reuters, "They will look at the area and the terrain. This usually precedes every normal operation."
Nigerian troops are familiar with the terrain. West Africa's military giant commanded a regional peacekeeping army in Liberia in the 1990s, when then rebel leader Charles Taylor stood within striking distance of Monrovia. Now, thirteen years later, the country is back at war.
"We have two battalions ready to go. If the situation warrants immediate deployment, that is still an option," said Colonel Onwuamaegbu.
Meanwhile, Ecowas-sponsored diplomatic efforts to end the war in Liberia continue in Ghana, where delegations representing Taylor's administration, the two rebel factions, Liberia's political parties and civil society groups have been meeting for seven weeks. But it was uncertain what impact - if any - political decisions reached in Ghana would have on the fighting in Liberia.
This is the third time in a month that Liberian rebels have made a sustained push to take Monrovia. Despite Taylor's bold promise to defend the city, government soldiers were seen turning back from the frontline, some saying they were no longer prepared to risk their lives for a leader who had agreed to step down and possibly leave Liberia - for asylum in Nigeria - once peacekeepers arrived. Taylor's troops expressed concern that if the "Papee" left the country, they would be abandoned.
His response was vintage Charles Taylor: "My men must understand now that I'm going no place, nowhere, until the international community has sufficiently deployed troops in this country."
With the bravado and bluster many have come to associate with the Liberian leader, who fosters an image of preacher-president, Taylor added: "If anybody thinks that by coming and shelling the city we are going to hightail and run out of town, I can tell them the fight is in Monrovia. I will never desert my city. I will never desert my people."
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The rebels say they want to avoid more humanitarian suffering, but hundreds of civilians were killed during their two previous strikes on Monrovia. On Saturday, a barrage of mortar bombs and ammunition again fell on the city, and bursts of heavy gunfire sent tens of thousands of residents trudging downtown in terror. Residents said the rebels had advanced past Monrovia Freeport, a few miles from the city centre.
Taylor accused the rebels of acting in bad faith and in violation of a ceasefire agreement between the rival sides. He said loyalist forces had moved "not an inch" into rebel-controlled territory.
"President Bush must take some of the responsibility - and the United Nations' Security Council - for preventing Liberia from being able to defend itself adequately," said Taylor. He was referring to U.S.-backed UN sanctions still in force against his country. The embargo outlaws the sale of arms to the Taylor government.
Liberia's beleaguered president stands accused of trafficking guns and diamonds in neighbouring Sierra Leone. He is currently facing charges of war crimes and an indictment by a UN Special Court across the border where he is said to have fuelled Sierra Leone's own bloody civil war.
