Conditions of Liberians are dreadful

MONROVIA, June 10 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - West African diplomats were due to arrive in the Liberian capital Monrovia Tuesday, June 10, on a mission to try to broker a truce for the war-shattered country, as the United States and other nations evacuated their citizens.

Mohamed ibn Chambas, the executive secretary of the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) which is brokering peace talks for Liberia being hosted by Ghana, and Ghanaian Foreign Minister Addo Akufo-Addo left Ghana Monday for the nearby west African country, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Chambas said they would briefly stop over in Freetown, the Sierra Leonean capital, and then spend the night in Conakry, the capital of Guinea, before leaving for Monrovia Tuesday.

The talks in the Ghanaian town of Akosombo, near the capital Accra, were suspended shortly after they got down to their first working session Friday after the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) stepped up their offensive against President Charles Taylor's government in the capital.

Together with a recently emerged rebel group, Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), LURD controls at least 12 of Liberia's 15 counties.

The rebels had penetrated to the edge of Monrovia last week, prompting French troops to evacuate 512 foreign nationals from the capital Monday. The evacuation proceeded without incident.

Among the evacuees were 170 Lebanese, 103 U.S. nationals, 17 French nationals, 11 Australians, six Britons, and "a large number of Africans from 10 different countries" as well as 61 children, the French military said.

They were taken by helicopter to the Orage, a French military vessel anchored in international waters off Monrovia's coast. The ship was expected to arrive Wednesday morning in Abidjan, the commercial capital of neighboring Ivory Coast.

U.S. President George W. Bush also announced that 35 U.S. military personnel were in Liberia with the aim of protecting the U.S. Embassy and U.S. citizens still in the country.

At the United Nations, the Security Council called for an end to fighting between the rebel and government forces in Liberia, while UN Secretary General Kofi Annan expressed alarm at the fate of Monrovia's one million-strong population.

"We are deeply concerned at developments in Liberia," this month's council President, Sergei Lavrov, the Russian ambassador to the UN, told reporters after two hours of consultations behind closed doors.

A UN spokesman said Annan was "alarmed at the severe impact which intensified fighting between rebels and government forces in Liberia is having on Monrovia's one million inhabitants."

Annan also warned all the parties to the fighting in Liberia "that perpetrators of international humanitarian and human rights law violations, which have been far too common in Liberia, will be held accountable for their acts."

Refugees

French troops evacuate foreigners

Aid organizations say thousands of Liberians are sleeping rough in the capital after fleeing their homes in the face of the rebel advance on the city, which is being supported by artillery bombardments.

According to BBC news service online, food and water in Monrovia are becoming scarce.

Most of the fighting has been taking place in suburbs around the Saint Paul's River Bridge, which links the capital with the rebel-held town of Tubmanberg.

The assault by rebels of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd) began Friday.

On Sunday, they gave Taylor - himself a former warlord - a 72-hour ultimatum to step down, but there has been no end to the fighting, which has been mostly in the western suburbs.

Last week, Taylor was indicted for war crimes by a United Nations-backed court in neighboring Sierra Leone.

Guinea, which Taylor accuses of backing Lurd, has welcomed his indictment.

Conditions 'dreadful'

Taylor was indicted for war crimes by a UN-backed court in Sierra Leone

There have been no reliable reports of casualties from the fighting but one aid worker from British charity Merlin, Magnus Wolfe-Murray, said that the capital of this nation of some three million people was flooded with refugees.

"Conditions are dreadful," he said.

The offensive by the Lurd and Model has cut off land escape routes from the city.

One giant stadium in the center is said to be packed with refugees.

Some 200,000 people have died in more than a decade of almost uninterrupted civil war in Liberia. The latest conflict was sparked in 1999, when LURD took up arms against Taylor, a former warlord in the civil war that broke out in 1990 and ended in 1997, the year Taylor was elected President.

The almost uninterrupted conflict in Liberia has also displaced some 300,000 people, many of whom have sought refuge in neighboring west African countries, forced to stretch their meager resources to take them in.