Taylor agrees to stop fighting against rebels

A day after calling on the United Nations to deploy a peacekeeping force in Liberia, President Charles Taylor on Wednesday agreed to cease hostilities against rebels who control the western suburbs of the capital, Monrovia, paving way for ceasefire discussions. Ghanaian foreign minister, Nana Akufo-Addo who met Taylor, along with Mohammed Ibn Chambas, the Executive Secretary of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) told reporters after their short meeting: "We received assurances from President Taylor that he will cease all hostilities." Akufo-Addo and Ibn Chambas were due to leave Monrovia for Ghana later on Wednesday, where ECOWAS and UN-brokered talks between Taylor's representatives and Liberian rebels opened last week. However, the talks were put on hold following the rebel assault on the capital and Taylor's indictment for war crimes by a UN-backed Special Court in Sierra Leone. Talks mediator and former Nigerian leader, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, announced in Akosombo, 100 km north of the capital, Accra, that the talks would restart on Thursday. Diplomatic sources said ECOWAS, the United Nations, the Ghanaian and US governments had drafted a ceasefire agreement which had been submitted to representatives of all the warring parties to study. Akufo-Addo said that he was hopeful a ceasefire agreement could be signed in Akosombo on Friday. The US government issued a statement in Akosombo appealing to all sides to be "very flexible during the peace talks so that issues can be resolved quickly and relief brought to the Liberian people". In Monrovia, Taylor's spokesman Vaani Paasewe told reporters: "The government wants the rebels to retreat to the positions they occupied before the Akosombo talks." That would imply a withdrawal to Kley junction, 38 km northwest of Monrovia. General Benjamin Yeaton, one of Taylor's top military commanders, took journalists on a tour of Monrovia's western suburbs which he claimed had been recaptured by government forces. The party went as far as Brewersville where most of the camps for 100,000 displaced people, were situated. "We will not allow Monrovia to be overrun by the rebels because President Taylor was democratically elected," Yeaton said. However, local residents said LURD rebels had retreated spontaneously without being pushed out by fighting. They said LURD fighters broke into shops and distributed food to starving local people while they occupied the area. Then government soldiers then came in and looted again for themselves. Those who had remained in the western suburbs throughout the fighting said they were nervous that LURD would come back into the area. As a result many of them decided to head for the city centre in heavy rain to seek safety. LURD announced on Sunday a three-day truce "to avoid a bloodbath" and allow Taylor to resign. But fighting in Monrovia continued, prompting Sekou Conneh, the chairman of the rebel movement, to pledge that he would travel from Guinea to the frontline on Wednesday, to persuade his fighters to respect any ceasefire that might be agreed at the peace talks. A diplomat in the Guinean capital, Conakry, told IRIN that Conneh "gave his word that his troops will call a ceasefire", adding that "it only now remains to be seen whether this will be implemented on the ground. Spent cartridges littered the roadway in the western suburbs of Monrovia, which until recently had been a battle ground. Many buildings were pocked with bullet marks. IRIN saw seven heavily decomposed bodies. Residents said most of the dead had already been buried, but everywhere there was a pestilential stench in the air. All the shops in the western sububrb of Duala town were heavily looted. There was no sound of gunfire anywhere in Monrovia, but the suburbs newly reoccupied by the government were packed with heavily armed soldiers. Taylor had earlier appealed to the United Nations to send a peace-keeping force to Liberia. An official statement broadcast by radio on Tuesday night said: "The government of Liberia is appealing to the UN Secretary General to draft a resolution for the immediate deployment of a UN force in Liberia." It added that a high-powered government delegation, headed by defense minister, Daniel Chea, would be sent to Ghana to negotiate a ceasefire. However, the Liberian government's call for a UN peacekeeping force failed to address key demands by both rebel movements that Taylor step down as president to make way for an interim government of national reconciliation which would organised fresh elections. Meanwhile the humanitarian situation throughout Monrovia, where hundreds of thousands of people are on the run following renewed fighting, continued to deteriorate. The non-governmental organisation MSF-Belgium said the main public 130-bed civilian Redemption Hospital had found itself on the frontline. "There are dead bodies in the main street and you can smell death in many places," Alain Kassa head of MSF in Liberia said. "Before all staff and patients [of Redemption hospital] fled, it was filled to capacity with a large number of war wounded." Overcrowding, lack of food, lack of clean water and a complete absence of sanitation, MSF-Belgium warned, would favour a fast spread of disease. The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said fighters had looted at least six four-wheel vehicles from various relief agencies. Measles and diarrhea had been reported in newly created camps for the displaced in the city, OCHA added.