Abuja talks delayed pending arrival of government delegation

Talks between rival Liberian groups that were due to open in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, on Thursday, were postponed by a day because the government delegation failed to arrive on time. Adrienne Diop, spokeswoman of the Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS), said the talks would open at 9.00 am on Friday, after the arrival of the delegation. The talks, under the auspices of ECOWAS, are aimed at working out modalities for a reconciliation conference expected to be held later this year in the Liberian capital, Monrovia. "The opening has been delayed because the Liberian government delegation is not yet here; their flight was delayed,” Adrienne Diop, ECOWAS spokesperson, told IRIN on Thursday. She said most of the other delegates - representing political parties, former rebel factions, civil society and other groups -had arrived in Abuja. The opening of the talks, originally scheduled to start at 13.00 GMT, has been shifted to 17.00 GMT, the official said. Scheduled to last three days, the meeting is expected among other things to work out the composition, size and date of the upcoming national reconciliation conference. "The meeting is a follow-up to the call by ECOWAS heads of state and government at their December 2000 summit in Dakar that the Liberian government should initiate a national reconciliation policy that would involve all sections of that country’s society," the ECOWAS secretariat in Abuja said in a statement. ECOWAS Chairman Abdoulaye Wade, who is the president of Senegal, and Nigeria’s head of state, Olusegun Obasanjo, had sought to have a Liberian peace conference held under the aegis of the regional body to further the cause of peace in West Africa, the statement said. Regional leaders consider peace in Liberia vital for ending conflicts in the three Mano River countries (Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone) that have threatened the stability of West Africa in the past decade. An insurgency begun by Taylor in 1989 ended in 1997 after peace brokered by ECOWAS led to elections which he won. In 1991, the seeds of conflict sown in Liberia spilled over into neighbouring Sierra Leone, leading to a 10-year brutal civil war between successive governments and rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). The war was officially declared ended in January 2002 and a peace process monitored and supported by the United Nations is under way in the country. In Guinea, the authorities accused Liberia of sponsoring rebels who launched cross border raids aimed at toppling the government of Lansana Conte. Liberia in turn accused Guinea of backing its rebels. The UN last year slapped travel bans on Liberian state officials and reconfirmed an existing arms embargo against Liberia's government, following accusations that it was providing the RUF with arms in return for diamonds from rebel-held territory. Taylor claims the sanctions have impaired his ability to defend Liberia against insurgents. In February, Taylor, Conte and Sierra Leone’s Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, agreed at a meeting in Morocco to work to bring peace to their countries.