Liberia needs $177 m in aid for 2004, UN official says

The United Nations will appeal to donors later this month for US $177 million of humanitarian aid for Liberia in 2004, the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) said in a statement. Ahunna Eziakonwa, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Liberia, told a group of Abidjan-based diplomats who visited the Liberian capital Monrovia on Friday that the appeal would be launched in Ottawa, Canada, on 19 November, the statement said. It quoted Eziakonwa as saying the Consolidated Inter-agency Appeal for $40 million of emergency food aid and $137 million for a variety of other relief projects would be followed up by a donor conference in January. Eziakonwa said the funds would be used for health, nutrition, agriculture, water and sanitation, and education programmes, protection and human rights, and to support disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of combatants. Following a peace agreement signed on 18 August, the UN plans to start demobilising and disarming the estimated 38,000 former combatants in Liberia's civil war in early December. The process is due for completion in April next year. Representatives from Canada, China, the European Union, Ghana, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Lebanon, the Netherlands, the United States and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)took part in the one-day trip to Monrovia. Last Monday, the Brussels-based think tank, International Crisis Group (ICG), warned that the period from now until the start of disarmament in Liberia was the most critical part of the war-ravaged country's peace-process. The ICG warned that it would be difficult to secure peace in Liberia without the compliance of all three warring factions: fighters loyal to former Charles Taylor, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL). A broad-based transitional government led by businessman Gyude Bryant was sworn in on 14 October to lead Liberia to fresh elections in 2005, but it has inherited empty coffers and debts of more than US $3.0 billion. Taylor has been granted political asylum by Nigeria even though he is wanted for war crimes by a court in Sierra Leone. The US government has announced a $2 million to whoever can deliver Taylor to the court.