Taylor set to quit, US troops may land in Monrovia

Charles Taylor was due to resign as President of Liberia on Monday in the presence of at least three other African heads of state, and diplomats said he was expected to leave the country immediately under their protection. There was rising speculation on Sunday night that US troops from warships sitting offshore would be flown ashore by helicopter soon after Taylor's departure to help Nigerian peacekeepers maintain order in the divided city and take control of its port. The Nigerians have so far only airlifted one batallion of troops comprising about 770 men into Monrovia and have been saying privately for days that they do not have enough manpower on the ground to take effective control of this city of one million people. Many of the Nigerian soldiers are tied up defending Roberts international airport, 50 km outside Monrovia. So far the peacekeepers have only established one forward base on the city's eastern edge. However, the Americans have three warships with 2,300 marines on board sitting just over the horizon ready to intervene if President George Bush gives the order. One senior Nigerian officer said on Saturday that a second Nigerian army batallion, would only start arriving on planes made available by the United States on August 14. Diplomats and relief workers reckon it would take a further week for these new troops to be fully deployed. Relief agencies have been pushing hard for the Americans to intervene to secure control the rebel-held port of Monrovia and its vital food warehouses. Such a deployment would allow food aid to be distributed immediately to an estimated 200,000 to 450,000 starving people who have been displaced from their homes by two months of heavy fighting in the capital and more to be shipped in. US officials remained silent about Washington's intentions, but US diplomats in Monrovia have held several rounds of talks over the past week with Taylor's government, the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebel movement and Nigerian force commander General Festus Okonkwo about how to proceed. And on Saturday a joint Nigerian/US military team inspected the port installations. There are grave fears that law and order may break down in the government-held sector of Monrovia following the expected departure of Taylor to exile in Nigeria unless peacekeeping troops move in quickly in larger numbers to take control. Taylor is a former warlord who was elected president in 1997, but he has had to fight rebel movements continuously in order to remain in power. He has promised to leave Liberia after stepping down and Nigeria has offered him political asylum. But a shadow hangs over him. A UN-backed Special Court in Sierra Leone has indicted Taylor for war crimes for his role in fuelling that country's decade-long civil war and has issued an international warrant for his arrest. And the United Nations Acting Commissioner for Human Rights said on Friday that Taylor and rebel leaders in Liberia should also be held accountable for grave human rights abuses committed in their own country during 14 years of near constant civil war. Taylor has not yet said when he plans to leave Liberia, but his wife Jewel held a farewell party for her staff on Saturday as family belongings were being loaded onto a truck to be taken to the airport. Diplomats and political sources said Taylor would fly out on Monday under the protection of the foreign leaders who flying in to see him hand over power to his vice-president, Moses Blah at midday (1200 GMT). Liberian presidential spokesman Vaani Passewe, said Taylor's departure from office would be witnessed by President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, President John Kufuor of Ghana and President Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique, the current chairman of the African Union, and dignatories from several other countries. A South African security team equipped with at least two heavily armed jeeps and a planeload of senior Nigerian officials arrived in Monrovia on Sunday to prepare for the foreign leaders' arrival. Taylor met his senior military commanders on Sunday evening after abandoning plans to make a valedictory radio broadcast to the nation. Instead, he distributed a cassette to foreign reporters in which he blamed the United States, Britain and Guinea for forcing him out of power and into exile. But he added: "God willing, I will be back." The LURD military commander in Monrovia, General Aliyu Sheriff, widely known as "Cobra," said on Sunday that he would not accept Blah as Taylor's substitute. The simple fact of Taylor handing over power to Blah would not be sufficient grounds for him to hand over control of Northwestern Monrovia to the peacekeepers and retreat to the city limits, he added. "We cannot accept this tricky arrangement where the same people who we fought against are going to head the interim government," he told IRIN. "You do not reject the father and accept the son." Blah is a long-time associate of Taylor. The two men underwent military training together in Libya in the late 1980's before launching a rebellion in 1989 that eventually brought them to power. But Blah's tenure of office is likely to be shortlived. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) which has been brokering Liberian peace talks in Ghana since June 4, is hoping that the warring parties will sign a comprensive peace agreement on Tuesday or Wednesday that will lead to the immediate appointment of a new interim president. ECOWAS officials in Accra said this would be a civilian figure with no links to either Taylor or the two rebel movements that now control more than three quarters of the country. Despite General Sheriff's tough talk, LURD is under considerable international pressure to hand over the port of Monrovia to peacekeepers quickly and withdraw to the Po river on the northern edge of the city. LURD leader Sekou Conneh met Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo in Abuja on Sunday and Obasanjo's spokeswoman said afterwards that Conneh had agreed to "speedily work to make the port available for humanitarian supplies," although he was still tying this to Taylor's departure. She declined to say whether or not Obasanjo would fly to Monrovia on Monday. The Liberian capital has been quiet since Nigerian troops began arriving on August 4 as the vanguard of an ECOWAS multinational peacekeeping force that is due to number 3,250 men by the end of this month, but there has been little word about the situation in the interior. Gbarnga, a town in northern Liberia, fell to LURD a few days ago and an uneasy truce appears to reign in Liberia's second city Buchanan, which was captured by another rebel group, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) at the end of July. Reporters who travelled by car from Monrovia to Buchanan on Saturday were stopped by government soldiers just outside the city, 100 km further east along the coast. The soldiers said MODEL still controlled Buchanan, but there had been no fighting with them for two days. Throughout the past week there have been signs in Monrovia that both sides are tired of fighting. On Sunday, a pro-Taylor commander, General T-boy, crossed one of the two bridges over the Mesurado river that mark the frontline, accompanied by 14 of his men, to embrace his LURD counterpart, General Chuck Norris. The two men hugged each other, smoked cigarettes together and shared a soft drink. General T-boy told IRIN during the encounter that he would disobey any order to resume hostilities. "For us, we are not prepared to fight any more,' he said. General Norris told him: "You people are our brothers who are also just soldiers. There is a need to bury our differences and move forward." But a few hours earlier, a burst of firing was reported from government soldiers near the bridges, showing that the situation remained unstable.