Klein urges relief agencies to operate cross border

Jacques Klein, the UN special envoy to Liberia urged relief organisations in neighbouring Cote d'Ivoire on Thursday to begin cross-border relief operations into rebel-held areas of southern and eastern Liberia. He told a meeting of humanitarian agencies in the commercial capital Abidjan that it would be easier for them to access eastern Liberia than for their counterparts in Monrovia. Over the past two weeks, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Medecins Sans Frontieres have both sent assessment missions into parts of eastern Liberian controlled by the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) rebel group. Klein said relief agencies were now looking at the possibility of setting up operational bases behind rebel lines in the port town of Harper on the Ivorian border and Zwedru, 280 km further inland, to help thousands of desperate civilians trapped by recent fighting in these areas. The Special Representative of UN Secretary-General arrived in Cote d'Ivoire on Thursday to complete a tour of Liberia's neighbours which has already taken him to Sierra Leone and Guinea. Klein, a former US air force general, said the main aim of his trip was to persuade government leaders to reopen their closed borders and renew cooperation with Liberia now that former President Charles Taylor had gone into exile and a peace agreement had been signed between the government and both rebel movements. "They don't have much that they can commit to support the rebuilding structure but they can offer goodwill and cooperation along the borders and open the borders to allow transit of food and medicines and also to allow refugee return," Klein told IRIN. "I think that every President and Prime Minister I've spoken to is sincerely interested in having Liberia restructured and rebuilt," he said. "We all know [Charles] Taylor was the problem for 14 years, he destroyed his own country and in the process he made Liberia be agent of war in the region. We have to stabilise Liberia and only if we are able to do so and make Liberia work then would the region work," Klein added. He reiterated that the challenges ahead were enormous and it would take four to five years to rebuild Liberia, at a time when the country has virtually no revenue of its own and the attention of the world's main donors is focused elsewhere. Klein commended the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for brokering the agreement reached by Liberian government and rebel groups in the Ghanaian capital, Accra and for deploying the ECOMIL peacekeeping force into Liberia. "We have to build on that for success," he said.