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Loyalist troops and rebels were locked in a tense standoff yesterday in the Liberian capital Monrovia, a city gripped by hunger and menaced by disease, on the eve of the arrival of west African peacekeepers.

From a desolate, semi-ruined hotel on an outcrop of rock overlooking the frontline an occasional burst of gunfire could be heard, but there was no sign of a repeat of Saturday's intense fighting for control of two key bridges.

But as smoke rose over the ruins of a building on the rebel frontline, no-one was betting that Liberia's latest four-year bout of civil war was over.

"Our security sources tell us there is going to be another attack," a frontline rebel commander known as Jacob said, insisting that his men would not make the first move.

"The men have been ordered not to fire. Nobody will make a move," he said.

Liberian Defence Minister Daniel Chea said that fighting was taking place yesterady in the second city of Gbarnga, as well as the in the rebel-held southeastern port of Buchanan.

On Saturday, Liberia's warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor promised west African envoys that he would leave office on Monday, August 11.

Nigeria, west Africa's economic and military giant, had offered Taylor asylum if he agreed to resign as leader of a nation that has suffered more than a decade of war and served as a breeding-ground for regional instability.

Now Nigerian troops are to spearhead a regional peacekeeping force, set up by the Economic Community of West African States (Eciwas) and backed by a tough United Nations mandate to bring peace to the shattered country.

Officials said that today a 776-strong battallion of Nigerian peacekeepers will be airlifted into Liberia from neighbouring Sierra Leone.

The force is expected to grow to 5 000 strong with more Nigerian units plus some from other Ecowas states.

Chea however said the planned force was not nearly big enough and called on the bloc to take a tougher line with the rebels.

"You need at least 15 000, but at least the presence of the peacekeepers is a very good begining," he said.

"I believe Ecowas needs to show some teeth... It has to go beyond this passive attitude".

Almost five years ago a group dubbing itself Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd) rose in rebellion against Taylor.

Along with a splinter rebel faction, they now control around four-fifths of the country, an impoverished land of 111 370 square kilometres of bush, swamp and tropical forest on Africa's Atlantic shore.

Lurd leader Sekou Damate Conneh was Sunday in Rome where he is the guest of the Sant'Egidio Community, a Catholic group involved in behind the scenes negotiations on the crisis, church official Paolo Ciani said.

The rebels have proved unable or unwilling to capture the capital Monrovia, a port city lying on a string of islands and peninsulas, which is now teeming with displaced families, desperate for food and clean water.

In June this year as the first of around 200 000 refugees from the fighting poured into the streets of the rundown city, a shocked Ecowas tried to broker a truce between Taylor's government and the rebels.

But the rebels - and the US - insisted that Taylor must step down if the peace process was to succeed.

The embattled president agreed, but until Saturday had dithered on naming a date.

Yesterday the World Food Programme announced that it had managed to fly in half-a-tonne of nutritional biscuits and planned to bring more.

But most planners believe a larger humanitarian mission will require a security force.

Vrola Chea, a 24-year-old refugee hiding out in the filthy concrete shell of the ruined hotel overlooking the frontline bridges, suffered eye injuries when a shell exploded over her head.

She feels Ecowas is her last hope.

"We are suffering. We have no food. We are dying," she said.

"Nigerian troops should come soon. They should save us".

Taylor unleashed one of Africa's most savage civil wars in 1989 when he led a rebellion against Liberia's then president, Samuel Doe, which lasted for six years and killed some 250 000 people.

He is accused by a UN-backed court of backing rebels in Sierra Leone, who were notorious for recruiting child soldiers and hacking off limbs in a war which raged from 1991 until January 2002 and claimed another 200 000 lives.

A year after Taylor's election in 1997 the Lurd took up arms against him, plunging Liberia into yet another war. – Sapa-AFP.

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