Pressure mounts for US to take lead in Liberian peacekeeping
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Sapa-AP
ACCRA West African leaders were asking that the US contribute 2000 troops to a peace force for warring Liberia, and want President George Bush to decide before he makes his first African visit this week, diplomats said yesterday .
The proposal being discussed would have west African states give 3000 troops for what would be a 5000-strong force to separate forces of Liberian President Charles Taylor and rebels, international officials familiar with discussions on such a force said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
United Nations (UN) Security Council ambassadors and west African officials were in Ghana yesterday, the third stop of a west African mission by security council diplomats that is focusing on Liberia's crisis.
Both sides in Liberia, west African leaders, and European and UN diplomats have pushed for a US role in a peace force for Liberia .
Bush is due to visit five African states this month in a trip meant to show his commitment to Africa. Liberia is not among the stops.
Bush's trip comes as the security council and west African states are working to put together an international peace force for Liberia, where fighting between President Charles Taylor's forces and the rebels fighting to oust him killed hundreds of trapped civilians in the capital, Monrovia, this month.
The war has displaced more than 1-million Liberians, and rights groups accuse Taylor's side of atrocities including the killing, raping, robbing and kidnapping of civilians.
UN secretary-general Kofi Annan has called for an international peace force. He urged that an unspecified security council member take the lead a request presumed to have been directed at the US.
"There are lots of expectations that the US may be prepared to lead this force," Annan said yesterday in Geneva. "Of course, that is a sovereign decision for them to take but all eyes are on them."
Some US state department officials have appeared open to some unspecified American involvement in such a force.
The US has made no such announcement, however, and many in Washington are likely to be strongly opposed to putting Americans between Liberia's rebels and Taylor, a warlord who won the presidency in 1997.
Instead, the US reiterated calls on Sunday for the armed parties to honour a cease-fire agreement they signed on June 1.
But France, Britain and others have called for a US-led force for Liberia and the country's rebels yesterday became the latest to urge US involvement.
"The US can lead the force, and the west Africans can play a supporting role," Charles Bennie, a rebel envoy, said in Accra, site of now suspended talks between Taylor's government and rebels.
The rebel official pledged that his side would not target Americans if they got in the middle of another Liberian cease-fire.
"If they get involved they will not face hostilities from rebels," Bennie said. "I don't know about Taylor's forces although I don't think his troops will fight Americans either."
Jul 01 2003 08:38:21:000AM Edward Harris Business Day 1st Edition |
