Liberia's main rebel faction threatened on Friday to fight any peacekeepers
deployed before President Charles Taylor steps down, casting a cloud over plans
to send West African and possibly US troops into the country.
A US soldier is greeted by Liberian children in Monrovia
July 8, 2003. President Bush will be ready to decide
within days whether to send US troops in to Liberia, a senior US official
said July 10 as momentum grew to rapidly send in a US-backed West African
force. [Reuters]
The statement by
Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) came as President Bush
considered whether to send US soldiers with a regional force.
Bush has come under increasing pressure to intervene militarily to stop the
growing humanitarian disaster in a country founded by freed American slaves in
the 19th century.
A UN agency warned on Friday that hundreds of thousands of displaced people
in camps outside Monrovia could face starvation if a peaceful solution was not
reached immediately.
LURD rebels said the deployment of international troops before the departure
of Taylor, who has been indicted for war crimes and told to step down by Bush,
would prop up the former warlord and arch-survivor.
"While we hope for the best, we are braced for the worst; therefore any
troops deployed before the departure of Taylor must be prepared for a
firefight," the LURD statement said, adding that such a deployment would be
"preposterous and unacceptable."
Bush, who is touring Africa, is expected to decide within days on whether
American troops should join a regional force.
Washington is wary after the humiliating and bloody retreat of US forces from
Somalia 10 years ago. The US army is already stretched by complex and costly
operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Liberia has little strategic importance.
Taylor has promised to step down and accepted an offer of asylum in Nigeria,
but he says he wants the international force in place first to avert chaos.
REGIONAL FORCE TAKES SHAPE
Foreign troops have been sucked into West Africa's brutal wars before.
British soldiers in Sierra Leone and French troops in Ivory Coast have both had
to confront -- and sometimes kill -- drunken, drugged-up fighters during
missions to end wars.
Liberia has been crippled by 14 years of almost non-stop war that has
poisoned the region, left hundreds of thousands displaced and hammered the
economy into the ground.
LURD started its rebellion in 2000 and with a second faction, known as Model,
now controls around 60 percent of Liberia. Its fighters struck into Monrovia
twice last month, leaving hundreds dead and sending thousands fleeing.
Arnold Vercken of the U.N.'s World Food Program told reporters in Rome that
more than 100,000 displaced people were living in camps in Monrovia's northern
suburbs.
"Our trucks are loaded and ready to go but we have no guarantees of
security," Vercken said. "These people are in no-man's-land. We just can't reach
them," he said.
Nigeria has said West Africa could quickly deploy an initial force of 1,000
to 1,500 troops in about two weeks. US officials have said any US role would be
"very limited" and mainly concerned with supporting regional troops.
Many Liberians think only US troops will be able to impose control over the
volatile fighters on both sides. During a civil war which cost 200,000 lives in
the 1990s, a Nigerian-led force failed to stop some of the worst episodes of
killing.
Nigeria has no treaty under which Taylor could be extradited to face the
U.N.-backed war crimes court in Sierra Leone.
Ghana's President John Kufuor, who is also head of West Africa's ECOWAS bloc,
said the asylum offer was a compromise to save lives, but did not give Taylor
indefinite impunity.
Kufuor also said he hoped an initial ECOWAS force would land in Monrovia by
about July 20.
