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Liberian Vice-President Moses Blah described as "mischievous and misguided" on Wednesday, a dissident group's offer of peace talks with the government, so long as it excluded President Charles Taylor.
"Anyone who wants to talk to me and not President Taylor must be joking," the BBC reported Blah as saying.
Blah was responding to a statement by Charles Bennie, the spokesman of the armed dissident force, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy. Blah said that Bennie's claim that LURD was ready for dialogue was a vain attempt to sow seeds of discord among senior government official, Radio Liberia International (RLI), a pro-Taylor station reported.
However, in an earlier broadcast on the same radio station on Wednesday, the chairman of the ruling National Patriotic Party, Cyril Allen, said the dissidents "should be talked to". He added, "I think our government should be open."
But, he said, "some older politicians among us" feel that the government should not encourage the dialogue because previous governments had not acted similarly. "You saw what happened to previous governments because they did not want to talk," he said.
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