Taylor keeps everyone guessing

MONROVIA, Aug 1 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Two west African envoys arrived in Monrovia Friday, August 1, for talks with Liberian President Charles Taylor on the terms for his handover of power, expected after peacekeepers begin pouring into the country next week.

Ghanaian Foreign Minister Addo Akufo Addo and Mohamed ibn Chambas, the executive secretary of the ECOWAS group, were to discuss plans for Taylor to leave Monrovia and go into exile in Nigeria in the coming weeks, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

A vanguard of up to 1,500 Nigerian soldiers is to begin arriving in Liberia by Monday ahead of a 2,000-strong regional force tasked with enforcing a ceasefire between government forces and rebels seeking to overthrow Taylor.

At a summit in Accra Thursday, July 31, west African leaders agreed to deploy the peacekeepers and told Taylor he must leave his country just three days after the full force has arrived in Liberia to bring an end to weeks of fierce fighting in the capital that have left hundreds dead.

The main rebel group - Liberian United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) - Friday renewed their call for Taylor to honor his promise to stand down.

"Mr Taylor must go. Mr Taylor cannot be a positive factor in any new dispensation in Liberia," Kabineh Janeh, who heads the LURD delegation at the Accra peace talks told the BBC's World Today program.

Taylor Keeps All Guessing

Taylor, the brutal warlord turned president of Liberia, was Friday under renewed pressure to go into exile to boost peace efforts in his impoverished west African state, the AFP said.

Liberians call him "superglue" because of the way money sticks to him. But he was also sticking Friday to the dwindling part of the country his forces still control.

Taylor, the head of an army that includes many child warriors who call him "pappy," continued to wrangle Friday as West African envoys tried to get him to commit to a definite date to leave.

His spokesman said a lot of talking still lies ahead before Taylor accepts a Nigerian offer of exile.

Some of his partisans, fighting a last-ditch stand against rebel forces, were pressing him not to leave.

Not only has Taylor helped bring his own country to the brink of ruin, but he has masterminded regional conflicts in neighboring Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast.

He faces an indictment before a U.N.-backed war crimes court in Sierra Leone, where he is said to have armed and trained rebels in exchange for diamonds.

The war there was characterized by appalling violence, including deliberate amputation of limbs and the recruitment of thousands of drug-induced children into a rabble army.

However, Ecowas chief indicated that Taylor was unlikely to be tried soon.

"He is not going to Sierra Leone, he is going to Nigeria," Chambas told the BBC.

For the past three years, Taylor has fended off attacks by rebel forces in Liberia that have seized about 80 percent of the territory.

Born in 1948 to a U.S. father and a Liberian mother, Taylor is a child of both America and Africa, just like the country he nominally heads, which was founded in the 19th century as a haven for freed black slaves from the United States.

Like many American-Liberians, he was educated in the United States - at Bentley College in Massachusetts, a business-oriented school.

Taylor joined Liberia's civil service as head of an agency responsible for controlling the budget.

Then President Samuel Doe later accused him of embezzling 900,000 dollars in government funds and Taylor fled to the United States, where he was jailed on an extradition warrant.

A flamboyantly-dressing, thrice-married lay preacher, Taylor returned in December 1989, crossing the border from Ivory Coast as the leader of a rebel force, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL).

The ensuing civil war saw the rise of other factions. But Taylor climbed to the top during the violent seven-year war which made Liberia a byword for anarchy and horror and during which Doe was tortured to death in the capital Monrovia.

By the time elections took place under international supervision in July 1997, Taylor had managed to craft the image of a warlord-turned-statesman.

As the country's most powerful figure, he simply appeared as the only man capable of stopping the violence, and he was elected President.

But his rise to power brought little relief to Liberia.

Fighting Rages Again

After a brief lull in fighting early Friday, heavy gunfire resumed in the capital, and mortar shells landed in the diplomatic district.

Several shells landed in the diplomatic area of Mamba Point and rebels and government fighters exchanged fire around two bridges which lead to the city center, according to the BBC News Online service.

Monrovia had been relatively calm since a Nigerian-led military fact-finding team arrived Wednesday night to prepare for the arrival of West African peacekeepers - now expected Monday.

Crowds of people who had emerged from shelter to seek water, food and medicine ran for cover as the shells landed, according to the BBC.

Monrovia residents have welcomed the announcement that Ecowas troops were on their way.

"Most of us are tired of war. We want a reunion with our people. Every Liberian wants to interact with his family," one Monrovian was quoted as saying.