Focus on peace and national reconciliation conference

The Liberian government's latest attempt to end years of conflict climaxed with the official opening of a national peace and reconciliation conference in the capital, Monrovia, on 24 August by President Charles Ghankay Taylor. But the conference suffered a major setback when all the main opposition leaders, including rebels who have been fighting to topple Taylor since 1998, decided not to attend. The African Union and the United Nations did send representatives to attend. The main rebel group, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), and leading opponents of Taylor, including former interim head of state Amos Sawyer and political activist Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said they did not attend because they could not trust Taylor to guarantee their security inside the country. Several of the opposition leaders invited were quoted by news agencies as saying that the conference "was a waste of time", an "attempt to lure them inside Liberia" and "a meeting that lacked sincerity". "With reports of continuing fighting in Grand Cape Mount, Bong, Bomi and Lofa Counties, the message to the opposition was, 'Even if you come to Monrovia to talk, I will continue hitting you'," said a diplomat in the Liberian capital. "Taylor has breached the confidence of his opponents in the past so it was difficult to trust his word." Information Minister Reginald Goodridge disagreed that the government approach to the conference was insincere. "The reconciliation process is more than just talking about war," he told IRIN. "It is to rediscover who we are, where we came from and where we are going. It is not a gimmick." "Unfortunately, some have misunderstood it," Goodridge added. "They think the president is a war-monger who cannot reconcile with anybody." Liberia, Africa's oldest republic, was founded by freed slaves 155 years ago but the country has witnessed war for much of its history. Its recent record of violent conflict is often traced to a military coup in 1980, in which Samuel Doe seized power and ruled until he was toppled and eventually killed a decade later. Taylor led an armed insurrection and controlled most of the country by 1992, but violent conflict continued despite several peace initiatives and the efforts of African peacekeepers. General elections were held in 1997 under the auspices of an agreement reached in Nigeria, between the warring factions. Taylor won but immediately fell foul of the other factions. Two years later the LURD emerged as a major fighting group. Meanwhile Taylor decided to support rebel groups in neighbouring countries, mainly the Revolutionary United Front which waged a brutal war in Sierra Leone for 10 years. This prompted international and regional outrage which eventually led the UN Security Council to impose targeted sanctions on the country. The sanctions are still in force. "The international community demonstrated its concern over the threat Liberia poses to sub-regional security. Despite recent overtures, this threat is still real...the economic driver that makes this possible is the timber industry which in 2000 generated minimum profits of US $100 million [which] did not benefit the state, but provided the resources essential to Taylor's war machine," said a report by Global Witness in September. According to the plans for the latest peace and reconciliation conference, delegates were to form groups - guided by consultants - to address thematic areas like economic development, peace and security, history and governance. They would then go out to villages for several weeks to gather the views of ordinary Liberians, before reconvening to draw resolutions in October. A peace and reconciliation secretariat would then implement the resolutions over a number of years. "The conference is a highly technical affair, seeking to draw protocols, strategies and action plans for resolution and implementation as regards the process of peace building, reconciliation and conflict resolution," its chairman, Ronald Massaquoi said. President Taylor appeared to be upbeat about the chances of its success. "I am dead serious. This conference is about all Liberians. We intend to talk and talk until we get it right, and not fight and fight and fight until we spoil it all," he said. "For those who failed to come to the opening, come in December or next year because this conference may last 40 years," Taylor said. "To those who thought they would spite us by not coming, we will keep the doors open," he told hundreds of delegates who turned up at the Unity Center, Virginia, on the outskirts of Monrovia. Then he added: "The LURD are terrorists who cannot win a war, who say I should pack my bags and go. But I am here to stay." Three days later, LURD denounced the reconciliation conference as a failure. "We think what is happening in Monrovia is a joke," said William Hanson, a senior political adviser with the group. "There can be no peace and security with Taylor in power." Continued civil strife and violent conflict has left Liberia in bad shape. The country's five million people have an average life expectancy of 26 years. At least 76 percent of its people live in poverty, 85 percent are unemployed, 67 percent are illiterate, and 40 percent of children of school going age are out of class, according to government statistics. "With a depressed economy, eroded governance capacity, an onerous debt burden, high unemployment, increasing levels of poverty and inadequate livelihood opportunities, all dimensions of human development in Liberia remain low," the United Nations stated in this year's inter-agency appeal for West Africa. Relief agencies estimate that at least 120,000 people, mostly from the northern Lofa County, have been displaced by war since May 2001 and live in at least eleven camps in four of the country's 13 counties. Thousands more have fled to neighbouring countries and the United States. There are also several refugee camps housing thousands of refugees, mainly from Sierra Leone. Various aid agencies and UN agencies are helping meet the needs of the people in the camps, while the UN refugee agency has started the voluntary repatriation of Sierra Leonean refugees to their country. Goodridge told IRIN that the "situation was getting better", and that the LURD rebels had been pushed towards the border with Guinea. However, he added: "For the displaced, the situation is like a vicious cycle, a bad dream. And we hardly have any control over their movements until a level of confidence is restored. You can't play musical chairs with people's lives." Diplomats say the situation remains unpredictable, and cite reports of LURD regrouping after recent setbacks in clashes with Taylor's forces. LURD spokesman Charles Bennie maintained, for his part, that Taylor was the main problem in Liberia and that the war was set to continue. "Taylor's propaganda that he has driven LURD into Guinea is intended to serve two short range purpose: give Liberians abroad the impression that he is in control and Liberians have no alternative but Taylor, and that he has won the war," Bennie told IRIN on Wednesday, 28 August. The situation worries humanitarian agencies, with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warning that continued fighting could result in "a large-scale humanitarian and human rights crisis." The absence of economic recovery and reconstruction in 1989-1997 increased the extreme vulnerability of populations already devastated by large scale destruction and human rights abuses, it added. "Even if the war ended quickly, the task of reconstructing the economy remains enormous," according to Philip Wesseh, managing editor of the daily Inquirer newspaper. The economy has deteriorated so much that Monrovia, where at one million live, has never had electricity or piped water for about a decade.