Johannesburg — West African leaders have announced that a first contingent of regional peacekeepers is expected in Liberia by Monday, opening the way for the departure of beleaguered President Charles Taylor who has already agreed to step down.
The decision came at an emergency summit of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) on Thursday in Ghana, whose President John Agyekum Kufuor is the current chairman of the regional organisation.
The news was greeted with some relief by civilians in Liberia, and brought a welcome glimmer of hope to people who have been begging for an intervention force to come between the warring factions. After 12 straight days of clashes, the capital Monrovia was reported quieter Thursday with a marked reduction in clashes between loyalist Taylor troops and Lurd rebel forces.
Correspondents said the relative lull in the fighting in the city could also be due to the presence of a minimal 10-member advance, fact-finding team dispatched by West African leaders to assess the conditions for the deployment of regional peacekeepers to Liberia.
Leading the reconnaissance mission is Nigerian General Festus Okonkwo, who will head the West African force in Liberia, to be known as Ecomil. Okonkwo told reporters on Thursday "There is going to be peace in Liberia as soon as possible." War-weary Monrovia residents lined the streets clapping and cheering as Okonkwo's convoy drove past, chanting ""We want peace, no more war, we want peace".
West African heads of state approved the deployment "of the vanguard interposition force, calling for an early deployment (at the latest) by Monday, August 4". Two Nigerian battles, numbering about 1500 troops, have been on stand by for at least two weeks, waiting for orders to go into Liberia.
After the regional summit in Ghana, Ecowas leaders issued a statement saying that Taylor, a former rebel leader-turned-president and now indicted war criminal, would be given three days from the arrival of the troops "to hand over power to his successor and depart for Nigeria," which has offered asylum to the Liberian leader.
It was not immediately clear whether Taylor had agreed to their timetable. But the message will be delivered to him in person on Friday, when the Ecowas executive secretary, Mohamed Ibn Chambas, and a delegation of three West African foreign ministers from Ghana, Nigeria and Togo are dispatched to Liberia with collective instructions from their respective bosses to brief Taylor about the outcome of the Accra summit.
Taylor, who has already promised to quit, has come under increasing pressure from the United States to give up power now, with Washington making his departure a condition for any US military involvement in the efforts to restore peace to Liberia. On Thursday the Americans repeated that message. White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, told reporters "Our position remains the same that Charles Taylor needs to leave. We need to see his actions in addition to his words."
In an interview with the BBC, Ghana's foreign minister, Nana Akufo Addo, said he expected Taylor to honour his pledge and be gone by Thursday - the deadline set by Ecowas. "We will go there tomorrow to let him know what the rest of Ecowas feels. I will be surprised if he stands against the collective decision of Ecowas."
Asked what would happen should Taylor resist leaving, Akufo Addo replied "the crisis in Liberia continues, that's what happens."
Chambas said the United Nations would provide the logistical support needed to airlift and support the first troops for an initial period, echoing the commitment made by UN secretary general Kofi Annan on Tuesday. Chambas told the BBC that Ecowas member states were each expected to contribute an amount "so that we can all share the burden of the peace effort in Liberia."
Many feel that the United States has a moral obligation to help Liberia, a country founded by freed American slaves more than a century and a half ago.
Chambas said the United States is still expected to play an important role in Liberia and that the initial US$10m offered by Washington, as well as other forms of American assistance, were much appreciated.
"This force is going to be in for a while," Chambas said. "We are already talking with the contractors who have been identified by the US government and providing them with the logistical and other requirements of our force, so we look forward to working very closely with the United States and we welcome the (US) troops that will be deployed off the coast of Monrovia and we hope that some of them, indeed, will come on shore to work with our forces on the ground to return Liberia to durable peace."
McClellan reiterated that Washington, which has dispatched three warships to Liberia to provide support for an international force, would financially back the West African peacekeeping operation. "The immediate task is for us to help support Ecowas get a vanguard force in there, reinforce the ceasefire and create the conditions where humanitarian assistance can be provided to the people of Liberia. We are going to do what we can, what is needed to help support Ecowas as they go into Liberia," the White House spokesman said.
The United States introduced a draft UN Security Council resolution on Wednesday to authorise a peacekeeping force, ahead of any future UN and/or U.S. military intervention in Liberia. One of the two Nigerian battalions waiting to move into Liberia has been serving on UN peacekeeping duties across the border in Sierra Leone, where Taylor is wanted for war crimes by the UN Special Court. Chambas said this battalion would make up part of the vanguard forces to be deployed next week.
The second battalion is expected to join them from Nigeria within the week. "We actually expect that, within three weeks of the deployment of this first battalion, the entire West African contingent of 3,250 will be deployed in Liberia. I know it has taken a long time to get us where we are now, but we are ready to go and we are happy that we can make a difference on the ground," Chambas said in a BBC interview.
Lurd rebels attacked Monrovia two weeks ago, leading to daily battles with Taylor's forces in clashes that have seen hundreds killed and hundreds more - including children - maimed and injured.
Lurd first launched its rebellion in 1999, two years after Taylor was elected Liberia's new president and a decade after he invaded Liberia in a bid to depose the then military dictator, Samuel Kanyon Doe. The UN estimated that more than 200,000 people were killed in what Liberians refer to as civil war part one.
Taylor's seven-year conflict devastated his small country and Liberia has never recovered. The economy has collapsed and there has been no pipe-borne running water or centrally powered electricity in Monrovia for almost 13 years. Food and medical stocks and other essential commodities are running low in the city, with relief workers pleading for a ceasefire so that they can care for and treat the wounded.
Exhausted doctors and medical workers at the main JFK hospital, the last functioning local medical facility in Monrovia that can perform surgery, appealed for an immediate end to the siege of the city so that medicines and other vital stocks that are in short supply could be delivered.
Liberia's second city, Buchanan, was seized by rebel troops early this week and government troops continued fighting Thursday to try to recapture the port city from the second armed faction, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (Model).
In a warning to the rebels, the Ghanaian minister said that with Taylor's departure - their repeated demand - there was no longer any reason for war in Liberia. "Their main request has been that Taylor should leave office. If that is assured them, and also an arrangement is put into place that will allow everybody to participate in the transitional arrangements towards democratic elections in that country, none of us can see any other reason for them to continue fighting."
Akufo Addo concluded that Ecowas was not prepared to "recognise any armed takeover of power in Monrovia or any other part of the community for that matter. So if those who are fighting the government, in the light of President Taylor's departure and the Accra peace talks and the arrangements there, will continue to fight, they have to take their own responsibility before their countrymen and before world opinion."
The minister outlined Ecowas' planned transition for Liberia expected to last, he reckoned, a minimum of one year up to two years - "long enough though to do some fundamental things like the disarmament of the combatants and the preparation on the ground for free elections."
Akufo Addo agreed that Liberia's new interim leaders would not come from either the Taylor government or the current warring factions, noting that: "The present arrangement that is being made here (Ghana) is to have the leadership of the government in the hands of people who are not associated right now, yes".
However, this did not square with what Ecowas has said about Taylor stepping down and immediately handing over to a chosen successor, either his vice president, Moses Blah, or the (parliamentary) house speaker, Nyundueh Morkonmana. On Saturday, in a rare public appearance since the upsurge in fighting, Taylor told a crowd of thousands at a stadium during a public address to mark independence day "One of these two men will lead this nation. Liberia cannot die for one man, Charles Taylor. Because of you, the people, I can no longer see the bloodshed continue."
Taylor told Liberians that the rebels had "killed more than one thousand peopIe. If I were not here, there would be bodies all over the city. I wish two things - that you Liberians will live and not die and that peace will come. As long as I'm here, you will continue to suffer...therefore I have decided to quit.
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Ghana's top diplomat said regional leaders fully acknowledged that funding Liberia's rehabilitation and political transition would be costly, but added: "We are going to find the money. We are going to have to try. We are going to have to do it. This is our crisis. It is a matter that is eating up our region. We will just have to find it. It is a job we have to do".
But the issue of the war crimes' indictment, hanging like a sword of Damocles over Taylor, was not formally addressed or mentioned in the final Ecowas communique. West African heads of state are thought to consider Taylor's departure from Liberia the top priority, so that they can work towards a peaceful settlement to the civil war in Liberia. President Kufuor told AllAfrica at the recent African Union summit in Mozambique that "with Ecowas, our immediate concern is to secure peace in Liberia, so that the people there can go about their normal lives."
Privately, regional leaders have implied that if the quid pro quo for Taylor's agreement to quit the political scene in his country is the lifting of the Special Court indictment, then this may have to be the compromise - at least for now.
On the issue of impunity Kufuor, himself a lawyer by training, reminded journalists in Maputo about developments after the second world war. He said " As to the impunity principle, its a sort of eternal principle. After all, how long did it take for the war criminals of World War II to get arrested and prosecuted - Eichmann and others? Im just saying that the possibilities of an offender against humanity being brought to book are always there and its not something that rots. So, if its found that anybody committed genocide any time, Im sure that the international legal system could come into operation against such a person as and whenever the Special Court or prosecutor comes by his evidence to move."
The Special Court prosecutor has stated that the indictment stands and that Taylor must face the charges, related to his involvement in the savage civil conflict in Sierra Leone, which range from crimes against humanity to rape, by the Sierra Leone-based rebel faction backed by Taylor, called the Revolutionary United Front (RUF).
