Troops deployment in Liberia awaits funding

Nigeria is ready to deploy 1,300 troops as an advance guard of peacekeeping troops in Liberia but wants the international community to pick up the bill, Nigerian officials said on Thursday. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) said on Wednesday the leading regional power would deploy two battalions of troops to war-ravaged Monrovia, Liberia’s capital, during the coming days. However, Nigerian officials declined to give a specific date when the troops would arrive. Ghana, Mali and Guinea-Bissau have also agreed to contribute troops to the Liberian stabilisation force, which is eventually due to comprise 5,000 men. "The international community is supposed to join and we are waiting for their input," Remi Oyo, President Olusegun Obasanjo’s spokeswoman, told IRIN. "There is also the issue of logistics which have to be worked out," she added without giving further details. A senior foreign ministry official told IRIN on condition of anonymity Nigeria was waiting for the international community to provide financial backing for the deployment of peacekeeping troops in Liberia. "Nigeria spent over US $8 billion on peacekeeping operations in Liberia and Sierra Leone between 1990 and 1998 without any external assistance and can’t afford to go into Liberia again without financial help," he said. ECOWAS officials were meeting US and Nigerian officials in the Sierra Leone capital, Freetown, on Thursday to thrash out the details of the deployment. ECOWAS Executive Secretary, Mohammed ibn Chambas, was quoted by international news agencies as saying the United States would contribute US $10 million for the force. Obasanjo made it clear when he took office in 1999 that Nigeria’s future participation in regional peacekeeping efforts would be conditional on funding by the international community, he said. Nigerian Brigadier General F. O. Okonkwo has been appointed the commander of the "vanguard force" that will go into Liberia, army spokesman Colonel Chukwuemeka Onwuamaegbu, told IRIN. He said a team of Nigerian army officers sent to Monrovia to study the situation in the Liberian capital and advise on the military requirements of the peacekeeping troops had returned to Nigeria. The troops were now ready to go and were only awaiting orders, he added. ECOWAS said the 1,500 troops to be deployed by Nigeria, Ghana and Mali were expected to secure a fragile ceasefire brokered by the regional body and protect civilians against fighting between rebel forces and troops loyal to embattled President Charles Taylor. Taylor, who has been indicted for war-crimes by a United Nations court in neighbouring Sierra Leone, has accepted an offer of asylum in Nigeria. Taylor has pledged to step down from office and leave the country as soon as an international force, preferably led by the United States, arrives in Liberia.