Taylor sets date for resigning but not for leaving

Liberian President Charles Taylor said on Saturday that he would resign as head of state on August 11 and eventually leave the country, but he did not say when. His commitment fell short of a demand by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) that he step down and leave Liberia within three days of Nigerian peacekeeping troops arriving in the war-torn country on Monday. Diplomats said the two rebel movements in Liberia, which have made big advances over the past three months, were unlikely to be impressed by Taylor’s delaying tactics. Neither was immediately available for comment. Taylor announced that he would resign as president on August 11, but did not say who would succeed him. He made the commitment at a press conference after meeting a high-level ECOWAS delegation led by Ghanaian Foreign Minister Nana Akufo-Addo. The mission, comprising ministers from Ghana, Nigeria and Togo and ECOWAS Executive Secretary Mohamed Ibn Chambas, arrived in Monrovia on Friday. But it was kept waiting for 24 hours before being granted an audience. The West African envoys eventually met Taylor at the Executive Mansion in central Monrovia against a background of heavy machine gun and mortar fire as government forces fought to dislodge rebel forces from Monrovia’s port and the city’s northwestern suburbs. Taylor said his resignation and the appointment of his successor would be confirmed by a joint session of both houses of parliament on Thursday and he would hand over power four days later. “At 11.59 am on Monday (August 11) I will step down and the new guy will be sworn in,” he said. But Taylor dodged the issue about when he would go into exile to take up an offer of asylum in Nigeria. “The most important thing is that everything that we said about resigning and leaving will happen,” was all that he would say. Taylor’s official spokesman, Vaani Paasewe, said Taylor was reluctant to leave Liberia unless an indictment against him for war crimes, by a UN-backed Special Court in neighbouring Sierra Leone, was dropped. “The question of his departure has still to be sceptical in the sense that the indictment still hangs over him and President Taylor may declare that he will prefer to leave the country as a free man,” Paasewe said. The Special Court indicted Taylor for war crimes and issued an international warrant for his arrest on June 4 in view of his support for rebels who killed and hacked the limbs off thens of thousands of civilians in Sierra Leone’s 1991-2001 civil war. Taylor welcomed the impending of arrival of 1,500 Nigerian soldiers as the vanguard of a multi-national peacekeeping force that is eventually due to number 5,000 men. He indicated that he expected it to prevent rebel forces from seizing full control of Monrovia. The city of one million people has been under attack from rebel forces for the past two weeks, food and fuel stocks have almost run out and thousands of people displaced from their homes by the fighting are starving. ECOWAS sources in the Ghanaian capital Accra said the first 300 Nigerian troops were due to be airlifted into Monrovia from Sierra Leone on Monday. They are currently serving with a UN peacekeeping force there. The rest are expected to follow from Sierra Leone and Nigeria later in the week. ECOWAS has said that within three weeks it hopes to have 3,250 peacekeeping troops on the ground in Liberia, including contingents from Ghana Mali, Togo and Benin. But so far there is little peace to keep. A ceasefire agreement signed by the government and rebels on June 17 has been consistently violated and the government has lost much ground in heavy fighting since then. A battle continued to rage in Monrovia on Saturday as the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebel movement fought to resist a fresh government attempt to seize the deep water port on Bushrod Island, which LURD has occupied for the past two weeks. Military sources said another battle was also under way on the outskirts of Liberia’s second city Buchanan, 100 km further east along the coast. Buchanan was captured by another rebel group, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia, on July 28 and Taylor's forces have been trying to fight their way back in ever since. Taylor’s attempts to delay his departure are unlikely to please the United States, which has a naval assault force with 2,300 marines on board standing by off the coast to intervene if necessary. President George Bush has repeatedly told Taylor to leave the country so that a lasting peace can be negotiated to end 14 years of near constant civil war. But with heavy military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan already, Bush has so far been reluctant to commit US troops to an open-ended operation in Liberia as well. Plans to deploy a West African-led peacekeeping force in the country were approved by the UN Security Council on Friday night. Diplomats said that even if Taylor does hand over power and leave Liberia, which was founded by freed American slaves in 1847, the two rebel movements and 18 unarmed opposition parties taking part in peace talks in Ghana are unlikely to endorse his chosen successor. According to the constitution, the next in line to succeed him would be Vice-President Moses Blah and the speaker of parliament, Nyudueh Morkonmana. Both men fought alongside Taylor when he launched a bush war to seize power in 1989 and are considered unconditional loyalists to him. ECOWAS, which has been brokering Liberian peace talks in Accra for the past two months, has demanded that the presidency and vice presidency of a post-Taylor interim government go to persons who do not belong to the three warring parties in the present conflict.