UNITED NATIONS: After nearly 14 years of civil strife that claimed the lives of over half a million people, a war-battered Liberia is looking for a new roadmap to political and economic recovery , and money to pave those "roads".

"We don't have anything. Nothing. E-mail doesn't work, fax doesn't work, telephones don't work. And we operate our offices with cell phones," Liberian Foreign Minister Thomas Nimely told reporters on Friday.

An official government delegation, led by the chairman of Liberia's National Transitional Government, Gyude Bryant, is visiting Washington and New York appealing for funds to rebuild a country in shambles.

"We also don't have electricity, we don't have water; and the sewage is spilling into the streets. So we have a lot of problems, but we don't have the financial resources," said Nimely, a member of the visiting delegation.

A two-day UN conference of donors that ended on Friday took in pledges worth more than 400 million dollars to meet Liberia's reconstruction needs in 2004-2005.

The bulk of the funds are coming from the United States and the 15-member European Union (EU), which have pledged about 200 million dollars each.

A joint assessment by the United Nations and the World Bank has projected Liberia's resource needs will cost about 488 million dollars over the next two years.

"The call for international donors to raise nearly 500 million dollars for the reconstruction of Liberia is a positive move in the right direction," Reverend Gabriel Odima, president of the Africa Centre for Peace and Democracy, told IPS.

"But 500 million dollars is not enough compared to the money the international community is spending on Iraq and Afghanistan," he said.

An international donor conference for Iraq last October raised about 33 billion dollars in grants and loans. Additionally, the US alone has earmarked a staggering 87 billion dollars to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan.

UK-based Oxfam, which has several large-scale humanitarian projects in Liberia, has complained about the lack of resources to meet the country's emergency needs.

"The United Nations appealed for 177 million dollars last November for immediate humanitarian assistance (food aid, emergency water and sanitation and medical care). But so far, they've only received around 20 million dollars," Helen Palmer of Oxfam told IPS.

"Liberia has been a neglected emergency for too long - with disastrous results," she added. "The humanitarian need in Liberia is very great, with the country's infrastructure shattered and hundreds and thousands of people still displaced by years of war."

Palmer said many displaced Liberians are unwilling or unable to go home. "Some are too scared to go back to their home areas while former combatants are still at large with their guns. Many have nothing to go home with or to," she added.

The United Nations is appealing to member states for more troops for its 9,000-soldier peacekeeping force in Liberia, which is 6,000 troops short of its target of 15,000.

Last month Secretary-General Kofi Annan complained about the "slow response", particularly from western nations reluctant to provide troops.

The UN chief said he expects the force to be fully deployed by the end of February. "I don't think it is too bad given the pace of usual deployment," he added. - Dawn/The InterPress News Service.