Liberia: US Withdraws Staff, Calls For Regime Change, Pushes 'War Crimes' Ploy

["David Quarter" <davidquarter@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[from Rick Rozoff]
---------------------------
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-707719,00.html

The Times
June 9, 2003

US staff abandon Liberian capital as rebels attack
By Michael Dynes, Africa Correspondent



-Fighting in the capital has overshadowed peace talks
in neighbouring Ghana, aimed at ending the fighting
between government and rebel forces and creating a
government of national unity before there are fresh
elections.
The talks were dealt a blow on Wednesday when the
Special Court for Sierra Leone issued an international
warrant for Mr Taylor, forcing him to depart early
from Ghana and seek refuge at home in Liberia.




The United States ordered all its non-essential staff
to leave Monrovia yesterday as government and rebel
forces fought pitched battles in the impoverished
suburbs of Liberia?s war-shattered coastal capital.
US State Department officials also demanded that
Charles Taylor should stand down as President. They
said that he should face trial for crimes against
humanity in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone,
where he was indicted last week by a UN-backed war
crimes tribunal.

Explosions and machine-gun-fire echoed across Monrovia
at the weekend as government forces scrambled to repel
a rebel advance in the western suburbs, driving
residents from their homes to seek refuge in the US
Embassy.

Yesterday the rebels, who were in control of most
roads in and out of the capital, gave President Taylor
72 hours to comply with their demands. Tens of
thousands of civilians trapped in the city fear a
repetition of the bloody street fighting between rival
tribal factions that occurred during Liberia?s last
civil war in the 1990s.

Magnus Wolfe-Murray, an aid worker with the British
charity Merlin, said: ?Conditions are dreadful. There
are anything between 300,000 and 700,000 people in
Monrovia without anywhere to stay.?

Fighting in the capital has overshadowed peace talks
in neighbouring Ghana, aimed at ending the fighting
between government and rebel forces and creating a
government of national unity before there are fresh
elections.

The talks were dealt a blow on Wednesday when the
Special Court for Sierra Leone issued an international
warrant for Mr Taylor, forcing him to depart early
from Ghana and seek refuge at home in Liberia.

About 30 senior government officials, including Moses
Blah, the Vice-President, were arrested by Mr Taylor
on his return, accused of trying to mount a coup in
his absence.

It is understood that Mr Blah had been urged by the US
Embassy to take over the country while Mr Taylor was
in Ghana. He refused, but was arrested anyway. The
State Department said that it had no knowledge of any
plot to overthrow the Liberian leader.

Mr Taylor said: ?Any unceremonious departure from this
office by my person could cause disastrous
consequences in Liberia which I do not want because I
love my people.?

Speaking of the rebels, he said: ?My Government is
going to do everything possible to defend its
citizens, even with the meagre means that we have. I
think they will be beaten back.? Mr Taylor, who has
dismissed allegations of war crimes, is accused by the
Sierra Leone war crimes court of exporting
revolutionary insurgencies to Sierra Leone, Ghana and
Ivory Coast, in which hundreds of thousands of people
were killed, mutilated and raped.

Mr Taylor, who was elected President in 1997,
triggered Liberia?s civil war with an abortive coup a
decade earlier, after which he earned a reputation as
West Africa?s most bloodthirsty warlord.

Daniel Chea, Liberia?s Defence Minister, accused a
rebel group called Liberians United for Reconciliation
and Democracy (Lurd), of trying to sabotage the Ghana
peace talks and insisted that government forces were
rooting out pockets of rebels in the city outskirts.

The Lurd rebels, one of two groups trying to unseat
the president, took up arms against the Government in
2000. The rebels now control about 60 per cent of
Liberia, a country of three million people founded by
freed American slaves in the 19th century as a haven
of liberty.

Kabineh Janeh, the senior Lurd negotiator at the peace
talks, said that his forces could take the capital but
had held back because of international pressure to
avoid large-scale loss of civilian life.


The Foreign Office said last night that a Briton was
among four Europeans who had been seized by rebels in
the capital, Monrovia. The others were understood to
include the Swiss Honourary Consul and one of his
aides.





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