WASHINGTON, July 30: Liberian President Charles Taylor must be gone and a ceasefire in place before US forces intervene in war-torn Liberia, US President George Bush said on Wednesday.
The US force will be there to support the peacekeeping force planned by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Mr Bush added.
“The conditions that I laid out for the Liberian rescue mission still exists: Charles Taylor must go, a cease-fire must be in place, and we will be there to help ECOWAS,” said Mr Bush, speaking at a press conference at the White House Rose Garden.
Meanwhile, Liberian rebels and forces loyal to President Charles Taylor fought fiercely for control of last-stand bridges in the capital on Wednesday as residents in the country’s second city counted bodies after battles there.
Taylor’s military commanders in Monrovia said fighting raged around New Bridge and Gabriel Tucker Bridge — gateways to the heart of a city besieged by rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) for 12 days.
“From this afternoon, heavy fighting has been going on around the two main bridges. We have been fighting for four hours but LURD forces are using heavy weapons, which are dropping in civilian areas,” one commander said by telephone.
He said at least five civilians had been wounded. Mortar bombs killed at least one person on Wednesday.
Residents in Liberia’s second city and strategic port of Buchanan said fighting between a second rebel group and Taylor’s stretched troops left dozens of bodies in the streets.
Rebels known as Model seized Buchanan on Monday, tightening the noose around Taylor, a former warlord indicted for war crimes by a U.N.-backed court and under U.S. pressure to step down.
“There are bodies all over the place. Dozens of people have been killed,” said one Buchanan resident by telephone. “The wounded are on the streets and there is no way to treat them.”
Another resident said the dead were being carted away in wheelbarrows when it was safe to retrieve them.
PEACEKEEPERS: West African pledges to send in peacekeepers have been hobbled by haggling over who should pay and concerns about the fighting. About 1,500 Nigerian soldiers are on standby to go in as a vanguard force but regional leaders want a truce first.
Many Liberians feel the United States should intervene to save a country founded by freed American slaves in the 19th century. Washington appears reluctant to commit troops, although three U.S. warships are on their way to Liberia’s waters.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said he hoped that one battalion of Nigerian troops would leave for Liberia “in the very near future” to launch a peacekeeping operation. “It is predicated on the departure of Charles Taylor,” he added.
Taylor has accepted an offer of asylum from Nigeria but he has not given a definite date for his departure.
More people are pouring into Monrovia’s centre, trying to stay one step ahead of the bombs and bullets. The main football stadium is packed with nearly 52,000 people and desperate civilians seeking refuge in its stands are being turned away.
Hundreds of civilians have been killed during the latest rebel attack, cut down by stray bullets or torn by mortar bombs. Others struggle to survive as food and water run out in a crowded city where diseases are rife.
During a period of relative calm in the city centre on Wednesday, people crept out of their hiding places and dashed to the market, hunting desperately for scarce food.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Walter Kansteiner visited Guinea, fingered in a United Nations report as the rebels’ main backer, and said Liberia was at a critical junction.
Liberia has been crippled by violence for almost 14 years, including a civil war in the 1990s in which 200,000 people were killed. Taylor has also been blamed for fuelling instability across the volatile region.
MILITARY TEAM: A West African military reconnaissance team arrived in Liberia’s besieged capital Monrovia on Wednesday to prepare for the planned deployment of regional peacekeepers.
“We’ve come here to see the situation on the ground...and then get back to look at our plan,” Nigerian Brigadier-General Festus Okonkwo, who will head the peacekeeping force, told reporters at Monrovia’s international airport.
The team is expected to stay in Liberia until Saturday, a senior official from the regional ECOWAS bloc said.
ECOWAS has said two battalions of 1,500 Nigerian troops are on standby to go to Liberia, where fighting between government troops and rebels bent on toppling President Charles Taylor has killed hundreds of civilians in Monrovia over the past 12 days.
However, no precise date has been set for the deployment, which has been hampered by haggling over who should pay for it and ongoing battles on the ground.
ECOWAS officials said the team was meant to work out the logistics of the deployment and would not go beyond Monrovia.
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