MONROVIA, July 31: War-weary Monrovia residents cheered on Thursday as a west African military team began a reconnaissance mission in the besieged Liberian capital ahead of the promised deployment of peacekeepers.

Scores of cheering people greeted the team as they arrived at the main JFK Hospital, shouting “we want peace” as rebel and government forces continued battling for key bridges at the doorstep of central Monrovia.

Hundreds of people lined the road to a disused communication facility outside Monrovia, where the evaluation team led by Nigerian General Festus Okonkwo said he was “looking for a place to base my communication network.”

“There is going to be peace in Liberia as soon as possible,” Okonkwo told reporters after visiting the so-called Omega Complex, a former US military facility abandoned in 1997.

Referring to the ECOWAS summit, Okonkwo said: “If they say we should move, we will move.”

In the face of a rebel onslaught on Monrovia in which several hundred civilians have been killed, ECOWAS last week proposed the urgent deployment of an advance contingent of 1,500 troops from Nigeria, west Africa’s military powerhouse.

Okonkwo, who arrived here late Wednesday, said the ECOWAS force could be in the Liberian capital “within days” to end a two-month rebel siege that has claimed hundreds of civilian lives and displaced some 200,000 people.

Nigeria has repeatedly stressed its readiness to send the advance force, but a senior official said Tuesday it was seeking guarantees that the costs would be covered by the international community.

The United States, after resisting international pressure to intervene, on Wednesday introduced a resolution in the UN Security Council that would authorise the deployment of a multinational peacekeeping force to halt the fighting in Liberia, founded by freed American slaves in the 19th century.

US President George W. Bush has repeatedly called on Taylor to quit the country, and the Pentagon has so far ordered three warships to west African waters.

Fierce fighting raged on early Thursday between rebels of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and forces loyal to President Charles Taylor in battles for three strategic bridges in Monrovia.

General Benjamin Yeaten, deputy chief of staff of the Liberian army, said that the rebel offensive had not abated with the arrival of the ECOWAS military assessment team.

“We are still in the same position in the three bridges,” he said. “The rebels used shells and mortars throughout the night and I would say the fighting was heavy. The battles still continue and the intensity remains the same.”

Despite the fighting, people have ventured out in recent days as optimism has taken root for an end to the civil war that broke out nearly five years ago and has seen the rebels gain control of around four-fifths of the country.

At the hospital earlier Thursday, Okonkwo spoke to doctors about their capacity to treat casualties suffered by the proposed ECOWAS force.

“I am saddened by what I have seen,” adding, “It gives me the urgency to return soon.”

“We will come back and we can see the areas (of the hospital) where we can assist,” he said.

Overworked doctors at the hospital — the only one of four functioning hospitals in Monrovia with an operational surgical facility — appealed for an immediate end to the siege and warned that medicines and other stocks were running dangerously low.

“Please stop the fighting at once, this is the cry of the medical community,” said Mohamed Sheriff, JFK hospital’s chief medical officer, said.

“We are receiving a huge number of patients daily, including women, children and the elderly. People are dying. We are vastly overstretched. It’s pathetic, pitiful.

“There is no food. Cholera and other dangerous diseases are on the rise,” he said. “This is our cry for help.”

Also Thursday, the international Red Cross said that it had managed to fly urgently needed medical supplies and equipment into Monrovia’s Robertsfield airport.

The Ilyushin cargo aircraft was also carrying a water truck that can deliver up to 15,000 litres of drinking water in and around Monrovia, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said in a statement.

DEPLOYMENT BY MONDAY: West African leaders agreed on Thursday to begin deploying a peacekeeping force to war-torn Liberia by Monday and told President Charles Taylor to prepare to step down to go into exile in Nigeria in the coming week.

At an emergency summit here called after two weeks of heavy fighting in Monrovia that has left several hundred dead, the leaders of the West African ECOWAS group decided to send a vanguard force of two Nigerian battalions of up to 1,500 to Monrovia.

“The vanguard force will be in Monrovia by Monday, the fourth”, the executive secretary of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Mohamed ibn Chambas said.

Chambas and the foreign ministers of Ghana and Togo will travel to Monrovia on Friday to personnally inform Taylor of the summit’s outcome and to discuss arrangements for the handover of power to his successor.

“It was agreed that within three days of the entry of ECOWAS troops in Liberia, President Taylor will hand over power to his successor and depart for Nigeria”, a statement said.

Taylor has already accepted an offer of asylum from Nigeria and said he would leave once peacekeepers arrive.

It was not clear who would head the Liberian government after Taylor’s departure, or whether the “successor” would hail from the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy.—AFP