July 6, 2003	Sunday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 5,1424

ACCRA: Cash-strapped West Africa is looking to the United States to help it solve the source of the biggest instability in the sub-region — Liberia.

Liberia’s President Charles Taylor, seen as being behind political upheavals in Sierra Leone, Guinea and in his own country, is clearly on his way out of power, as the US has been demanding. Liberian mercenaries have also fought in the Ivory Coast civil war and have been sighted in Congo.

Taylor, a former warlord turned president, is being helped by West African leaders to go into exile in Nigeria, instead of facing the UN War Crimes Court in Sierra Leone.

Now with the war in Liberia causing serious humanitarian and economic hardship for its citizens, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is determined to end the crisis once and for all.

However, according to the Executive Secretary of ECOWAS, Mohamed Ibn Chambas, West African states do not have the means to fund a peacekeeping force whose cost for six months is estimated at 104 million dollars (90 million euros).

While the people of Liberia are itching for Taylor to leave following demonstrations in the capital, ECOWAS defence and military chiefs have no idea when the multi-national peacekeeping force they envisage would be deployed.

“We have limitations on how quickly we can move in,” said Chambas in Accra. “That is why we need a lead nation,” he added.

And the US, which has historical ties with Liberia, is being urged to take the lead not only in footing the bill but also in providing some 2,000 of the 5,000 troops the defence and security chiefs think will be needed. ECOWAS has pledged 3,000 troops.

Liberia was founded by freed US slaves, but the US turned a deaf ear to appeals to intervene during Liberia’s bloody civil war from 1990-97.

Taylor funded the rebel movement lead by Corporal Foday Sankoh in Sierra Leone which committed some of the worst atrocities in history, including killing and maiming civilians and employing child soldiers.

Now, Chambas wants a spearhead force led by the US to restore order in Liberia as the French and British have done in Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone.

Such a force would be expected to transform itself into the International Stabilisation Force envisaged under the June 17 ceasefire agreement.

The ECOWAS military and defence chiefs, who ended a two-day meeting in Accra on Friday, did not disclose the pledges they made to comprise the 3,000 troops promised, but sources said Ghana would put up 250 soldiers.—dpa