Lubbers urges Liberian government and rebels to share power

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers ended an eight-day tour of five West African countries on Sunday, saying Liberians should face reality and bring peace to their war-torn country by agreeing to share power between wrangling political and armed groups. Lubbers, who visited Liberia on 14 May, said the scale of human misery there was awful, with violence all over the place. Liberian President, Charles Taylor failed to turn up for a scheduled meeting with him. He met the health minister and officials from Taylor's office instead. "The time has come for Liberians to face reality," Lubbers told reporters in the Guinean capital, Conakry on Sunday. "It is difficult to continue providing assistance where there are no solutions, to continue sending staff to dangerous places and sending aid to people who do not even get it." UN officials said in Abidjan on Monday it was now impossible for relief organisations to operate in 80 percent of Liberia, where rebel movements have been advancing steadily against government positions in recent weeks. Relief workers in Abidjan said the port of Harper near the Cote d'Ivoire border, had become the latest town to fall to rebel forces. The offices of humanitarian organisations in Harper had been ransacked and nothing was known about the fate of 1,200 Ivorian refugees and 800 nationals of other West African countries who had been trapped there, they added. Lubbers said conflict in Liberia, which has simmered for the last 14 years, had destablised several countries of the region. It had not only stopped displaced people from returning home, but had also hampered the activities of aid workers within camps for refugees and Liberians dispaced within their own country, he said. While in Guinea, the former Dutch prime minister visited two refugee camps in the eastern Forest region, including one at Laine which was originally set up by UNHCR 6,000 people but which now harbours 19,000. He also met President Lansana Conte, aid workers and officials of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to review the situation of refugees in West Africa. Earlier, Lubbers hailed the peace process in Sierra Leone, saying there was a positive spirit among returnees and refugees in the war-devastated country, which officially returned to peace in January last year. He met elected President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah on Thursday in the eastern town of Kenema. "I was here two years ago, when Sierra Leone was still at war," Lubbers said. "Discussions with RUF [Revolutionary United Front] were planned and in fact those led the way to a Sierra Leone which nowadays finds itself in peace and where more than 200,000 Sierra Leoneans have returned over the past year." Kabbah said he hoped tens of thousands of Sierra Leonean refugees still scattered in several West African countries would be repatriated quickly. The UNHCR said Lubbers discussed with Kabbah the seriously deteriorating situation in neighbouring Liberia. Both agreed that the time had come for Taylor to discuss a solution to the conflict with rebel factions, it added. The UNHCR said Kabbah expressed concern about Liberian ex-combatants flocking into Sierra Leone whom UNHCR did not recognise as refugees. These were being refered to the Sierra Leonean government after screening, the UNHCR quoted him as saying. While in Sierra Leone, Lubbers visited camps for Liberia refugees, an amputee settlement and schools. At the Pakistan friendship school at Yengema in the east of the country, he met returnees who have turned rocket-propelled grenades and other war items into cowbells and agricultural tools. The High Commissioner had earlier visited Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana.