ECOWAS prepares reconciliation meeting

A meeting to prepare for a reconciliation conference involving Liberia's political groups, civil society organisations and warring parties is due to begin on Thursday in Abuja, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) reported. The three-day meeting, held under the auspices of ECOWAS, will take place at the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution in the Nigerian capital. Former heads of state, the Liberian government, political parties, civil society, former warring parties and the current dissident group, Liberian United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), were expected to attend, ECOWAS reported on Tuesday. The subregional organisation said the meeting's purpose was to fix the date of the reconciliation conference - scheduled for later this year in the Liberian capital, Monrovia - to determine which groups would attend, and to set the number of participants. However, Conmany Wesseh, the exiled executive director of the Center for Democracy and Empowerment, told IRIN on Wednesday that there were different views on the aim of this week's meeting. President Charles Taylor, he said, saw it as a planning session for "his national reconciliation conference to be held in July" whereas Wesseh's and likeminded groups viewed the meeting "as one that should be a leadership forum for [discussion of the] proper governance of our country". Wesseh said his group also thought the meeting should involve only those political parties "represented in the national assembly" and civil society bodies "actively promoting" democracy. The idea to convene a peace conference came from the chairman of ECOWAS, President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal and his Nigerian counterpart, Olusegun Obasanjo. ECOWAS reported that they agreed that conference would be held under the auspices of the community and "be presented to all Liberians".