Taylor will leave for exile on Monday - diplomats

Charles Taylor has agreed to fly out of Liberia on Monday shortly after resigning as president in the presence of several African heads of state, diplomatic and Liberian political sources said on Friday. His departure to exile in Nigeria would be followed by the signing of a comprehensive peace agreement between his government and two rebel movements in the Ghanaian capital Accra, within the following 48 hours, they added. The warring factions and unarmed political parties signing the agreement would immediately appoint a civilian figure with no links to Taylor or the rebel movements as interim president, a source in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) said. ECOWAS has been acting as mediator in peace talks that have been under way in Ghana since June 4. It has already begun to deploy a peacekeeping force in Liberia known as ECOMIL. An ECOWAS official in Accra told IRIN: "Latest by Wednesday, a comprehensive peace agreement on Liberia will be signed. It is now accepted that none of the leadership of the warring factions shall be part of the interim administration. We have also determined the size of the cabinet, the legislative assembly and the judiciary." The official added, "Immediately, we announce who the Interim President will be and have all signatories to sign the peace agreement, all the delegates will go back to Liberia to select members of the interim administration." Diplomatic sources in Accra and the Liberian capital Monrovia, said Taylor's handover of power to his Vice-President, Moses Blah, would be attended by the presidents of Ghana, South Africa and Togo. President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, might also attend the ceremony. If not, Nigeria would be represented by its foreign minister, Oluyemi Adeniji instead, they added. A diplomatic source in Monrovia and a political source in Accra said Taylor had agreed to fly out shortly after the ceremony, with his personal security guaranteed by the visiting heads of state. General Aliyu Sheriff, alias "Cobra," the military chief of staff of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebel movement, said on Friday that his forces would only withdraw from Monrovia and hand over control of its strategic port to Nigerian peacekeeping troops once Taylor had left the country and Taylor's troops had also withdrawn from the city. "If ECOMIL is here to take charge of the Liberian people then we will withdraw and the government troops must withdraw to Scheffelin camp (20 km east of Monrovia)," Sheriff told reporters at his headquarters near the port on Bushrod Island. "We want to see Monrovia as a safe haven free of arms," he added. But Sheriff warned there would be no deal if Taylor delayed his departure. "If Taylor refuses to leave Liberia, we will fight him and I say what I mean. If he does not leave, that means he has not stepped down." With an informal truce holding in Monrovia for the third day running, Sheriff gave permission for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) to make an immediate assessment of relief needs in the rebel-held northern suburbs of the city. He said only one make-shift hospital was functioning there in the premises of the brewery, and the population was desperately short of medicine. Food is less of a problem in the LURD sector of Monrovia since the rebels have been helping themselves to food stocks of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the Firestone rubber plantation stored at the warehouses in the port and have been distributing rice to civilians. An IRIN correspondent saw seven commandeered WFP trucks being driven round the LURD sector of Monrovia carrying food, including three that were unloading supplies at the rebels' military headquarters. Jordi Raich, an ICRC official, said after talks with Sheriff: that the LURD commander had given ICRC and MSF permission to "assess the general humanitarian situation on the ground" in rebel-held areas of the city and they would embark on this task immediately. Relief agencies are desperate for Nigerian troops, who began arriving on Monday as the vanguard of a multinational peacekeeping force, to take control of the port. This would allow food distribution to resume to the starving population of government-held areas of Monrovia and more supplies to be brought in by sea. Estimates vary, but relief agencies say between 200,000 and 450,000 displaced people are in urgent need of food, shelter and clean drinking water in Monrovia, which has been under attack by LURD for the past two months. The arrival of several hundred Nigerian peacekeeping troops aboard UN helicopters from neighbouring Sierra Leone has stopped the fighting in Monrovia, where an informal truce is in place. But fighting between the government and rebels has continued elsewhere in the country. A government military source said LURD finally overan the town of Gbarnga, 120 km north of Monrovia on Wednesday after a battle lasting several days. Fighting has also continued with a second rebel group, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), in the port city of Buchanan, 100 km east of Monrovia. MODEL overan Buchanan on July 28 and said on Thursday that it had beaten off a government attempt to recapture the city. Taylor's forces tried to bring in more ammunition by plane before dawn on Thursday, but the consignment was intercepted and impounded by the Nigerian peacekeeping troops who now control Robertsfield international airport. Nigerian military sources said that following this incident the peacekeepers moved rapidly to establish a base in Monrovia's eastern suburb of Sinkor in order to keep a close eye on the nearby Spriggs Payne airfield, which has a shorter runway and is mostly used by small planes for domestic flights. In Accra, ECOWAS officials said they had managed to iron out most of the thorny issues which had been holding up a final conclusion to the two-month old talks. Foremost among these were demands by LURD and MODEL that they should each be allowed to appoint a vice-president. Both have now given way on this point. Moses Jardo, a senior member of the LURD delegation to the peace talks, told IRIN: "Yes, LURD is close to signing up on the comprehensive peace agreement. Taylor has made a commitment to leave and it will be up to the International community to enforce his departure." "Hopefully, come next week, we shall have an interim administration in place," he added. MODEL however, which had not yet seen the latest draft of the peace agreement, was more reticent. Tiah Slanger, the leader of the MODEL delegation in Accra, said: "Though I am optimistic about signing the agreement next week, I will want to first see the details of the document before I endorse it. If it involves the interest of Liberians, then MODEL will sign." ECOWAS officials said the interim government would rule Liberia for up to two years in order to rebuild a society shattered by 14 years of near constant civil war and organise fresh elections. During that period a UN peacekeeping force would be deployed in the country to disarm the warring factions and maintain security. Taylor, a warlord who was elected president in 1997, is preparing to leave office under the shadow of an indictment for war crimes by a UN-backed Special Court in Sierra Leone. He is accused of backing rebels who murdered and mutilated tens of thousands of civilians in that country's civil war from 1991 to 2001. On Friday, the United Nations issued a damning report about atrocities in Liberia since Taylor launched a rebellion to seek power in 1989. It estimated that 250,000 people had lost their lives in the conflict, more than half of whom were civilians and that in recent months the situation in the country had "deteriorated in a shocking manner." Bertrand Ramcharan, the UN Acting High Commissioner for Human Rights, said: "The situation of human rights in Liberia has been and remains grave and grievous to public conscience around the globe." He urged that those responsible for the orgy of murder, rape, torture and recruitment of children as combatants be brought to justice. "The law must be allowed to take its course in respect of the mighty and the insolent - whether they be on the government or rebel sides," Ramcharan said.