UN peacekeepers open major highway to the north

United Nations peacekeepers in Liberia have opened the main highway leading from the capital, Monrovia, to Sanniquelle, the provincial headquarters of Nimba county in northern Liberia near the border with Guinea and Ivory Coast, the UN's Force Commander General Daniel Opande said. The highway closed in February due to intense fighting between fighters loyal to former president Charles Taylor and the main rebel group, the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD). The road provides easy access from Monrovia to the border points of the Guinean Forest region and northwestern Ivory Coast. General Opande told reporters on Wednesday that UN peacekeepers (UNMIL) negotiated the reopening of the highway with both former government and LURD fighters, both of whom had occupied it. "It is now opened, you can drive freely and go to Sanniquelle and come back...we have travelled on the route all the way from Sanniquelle and Ganta. The first of the civilians who wanted to go their way, were on this route on Monday," he said. "We continue to patrol the road ourselves nearly every day. Our Guinean [Bissau] battalion sends patrol from Kakata everyday beyond Baala and back or into Ganta and then back." Ganta was a densely populated commercial town in Nimba, 247 km northeast of Monrovia, before it fell into the hands of LURD rebels in late March. The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, reported recently that a mission it sent to Sanniquelle found that large number of people preferred to live in the bush, until there could be a deployment of peacekeepers. General Opande also said a team comprising representatives of Liberia's transitional government and UNMIL had been dispatched to the eastern parts of Nimba County, near the Ivorian border where skirmishes between former government fighters and the second rebel group, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), had been reported. The team included MODEL representatives and officials from the Justice and Defence Ministries. "We had a clear message to MODEL fighters. Stop it and withdraw to Tappita [because] they were on the offensive moving northwards to Saclepea. The same message was taken to the government troops on the other side to disengage from those unnecessary skirmishes." Tappita is a key town in eastern Nimba very close to the Ivorian border town of Toulepleu, while Saclepea is in the central are of the northern Liberian County. Asked why UNMIL had not deployed troops to that volatile area, General Opande said: "We do not have enough troops. We would love to do that, but we are currently stretched to the limit." UNMIL so far has about 4,500 troops out of its anticipated strength of 15,000 in Liberia. Most of these are deployed around Monrovia. The force however expects to achieve its full strength early next year.