Monrovia quiet as US urged to send troops

The Liberian capital Monrovia remained calm on Sunday, two days after rebel forces withdrew from the city's western suburbs, but residents in the areas newly reoccupied by government forces reported persistent harassment by fighters loyal to President Charles Taylor. People thronged to churches to pray for peace in this war-torn city of one million and although most shops remained closed after heavy fighting earlier in the week, some taxis plied the streets. Relief workers reported that government soldiers had broken into UN World Food Programme (WFP) warehouse in Monrovia's Freeport and had stolen trucks and an undetermined quantity of the 8,000 tonnes of food stocks stored there. Eyewitnesses said armed men had assaulted the headquarters of the government's security police, the National Bureau for Investigation, on Thursday night and had taken away 16 political prisoners accused by Taylor of supporting the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebel movement. Following two LURD attacks on Monrovia in the past three weeks and the breakdown of a 17 June ceasefire agreement between government and rebel forces, there were growing calls over the weekend for the United States to lead a multinational intervention force to restore order in Liberia. The country's three million people have suffered 14 years of near-constant civil war and there is a chronic shortage of food, safe drinking water and medical supplies in its beleaguered capital. Several hundred people have been killed and tens of thousands have been displaced from their homes by two rebel assaults on the city this month. President George W Bush urged Liberian President Charles Taylor to step down on Thursday to save the country from further bloodshed, but he stopped short of spelling out how Washingon would help the peace process. Diplomats said that with US troops heavily committed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon was unwilling to deploy additional forces in a new theatre of conflict. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the Security Council on Saturday to dispatch a multinational intervention force to Liberia to prevent "a humanitarian catastrophe." Annan said in a strongly worded letter to the Security Council president, that this should be led by a member state - an apparent allusion to the United States. He also said it should be authorised under chapter Vll of the UN Charter which permits the use of force to retore order. Britain and France, two other permanent members of the Security Council, have both urged Washington to take the lead on military intervention in Liberia. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which is brokering peace talks between the Liberian government and rebels in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, has also urged the United States to take a leading role in the dispatch of peacekeepers. French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, said during a visit to Ghana on Saturday that Britain and France had "assumed their responsibilities" in two of Liberia's neighbours, Sierra Leone and Cote d'Ivoire, where they had led recent military interventions to halt civil war. Villepin said it was now time for the United States to do the same in Liberia, which was founded by freed American slaves in the early 19th century. "The most pressing things are the ceasefire and the deployment of an international force," he told reporters after talks with Ghanaian President John Kufuor, the current chairman of ECOWAS, adding that "the United States has a special link with Liberia". Earlier this week, Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's ambassador to the UN, who is currently leading a Security Council mission to West Africa, urged the United States to lead a multinational force to restore order in Liberia, highlighting Washingont's historical ties with the country. In his letter to the Security Council, Annan said: "The consequences of allowing the situation to spiral out of control are too terrible to contemplate." He noted the danger posed by the Liberian conflict to neighbouring Sierra Leone, where a UN peackeeping force is assisting a return to democracy after 10 years of civil war, and to Cote d'Ivoire, which has been split in two by a civil war which erupted last year. Annan warned that the scale of the Liberian crisis could exceed that of Bunia in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where France is spearheading a UN-backed force to try and stop a wave of killings by tribal militias. "Broader international action is urgently needed to reverse Liberia's drift towards total disintegration," he said. In a separate report to the Security Council on the situation in Sierra Leone, where 13,000 UN peacekeepers are stll stationed, the UN Secretary-General remarked: "It is inconceivable to contemplate sustained peace in Sierra Leone in an unstable neighbourhood." He continued: "The international community must therefore provide the necessary support for the ongoing peace negotiations on Liberia and the implementation of the Linas-Marcoussis (peace) Agreement in Cote d'Ivoire, which promises to pave the way for a return of stability to the sub-region." Thousands of Liberians have demonstrated outside the US embassy for the past four days urging Washington to send troops. Even Taylor himself has urged the US to intervene. Sidestepping Bush's call for his own removal from power, Taylor said in a radio broadcast on Friday night: "We ask the international community, most especially the US, to do everything in its power to take Liberia out of this mess ... we seek a peace of smooth landing where there will be ceasefire monitors, international troops." Despite persistant calls by the government for its own soldiers and militiamen to stop looting and the exemplary execution of two looters on Friday, they continued with their spree of armed robbery over the weekend. Relief workers in Monrovia said two WFP trucks taken from the agency's depot in the Freeport were seen being driven through the city by government soldiers on Saturday. Eyewitnesses had meanwhile seen pro-government fighters taking food from the WFP warehouse in the port, although it was not clear how much had been stolen. A WFP official who went to see what was happening, was repeatedly refused access to the port on security grounds, they added. Residents in the western suburbs of Monrovia, which were overun by LURD rebels earlier in the week, reported constant harassment by government soldiers and militiamen who moved back into the area following LURD's withdrawal on Friday. Eyewitnesses said pro-Taylor combatants had on several occasions fired over the heads of residents, accusing them of being rebel sympathisers. They had also stolen personal items from people stopped for identity checks, including their shoes, watches and mobile phones and any money they could find. The residents told IRIN that many people without proper identity papers had been detained. Military sources said LURD, which had pounded Monrovia city centre with heavy mortar and machine gun fire for two days, had withdrawn from the city voluntarily, rather than under pressure from Taylor's poorly disciplined forces. Residents in the western suburbs said the government had reoccupied the whole of Bushrod Island, where Monrovia's deep-water port is situated, but had not advanced beyond the Po River, which separates Bushrod Island from the mainland to the northwest. LURD had withdrawn to Ahmadu Town, leaving a 1 km-wide buffer zone between their own forces and those of Taylor on the other side of the St Paul's Bridge, they added. Eyewitnesses meanwhile reported that unidentified armed men had broken into the headquarters of the National Bureau of Investigation in central Monrovia on Thursday night, killing two security guards. They said the attackers had made off with 16 political prisoners being held there. These included Aloysius Toe, a religious leader and human rights activist, Sheick Sacor, the representative of Human Rights Watch in Liberia, and Mobutu Krumah, a cousin of Alhaji Krumah, leader of ULIMO, a rebel movement which fought against Taylor in the 1990s. Peace talks between the government and rebels in Accra have been adjourned until next Friday to allow time for a Joint Verification Team to agree on the positions of the warring parties on the ground before negotiations continue on a political settlement. While LURD is active in northern Liberia and around Monrovia, a second rebel group, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) has occupied the southeast of the country since it appeared on the scene in March. Rebel forces now occupy about two thirds of Liberia. Taylor was elected president in 1997 after fighting his way to power in an earlier rebellion which he launched in 1989.