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A to
p-level west African delegation visited Liberia's embattled
President Charles Taylor yesterday just four days before he is due
to resign and prepare to leave his war-torn country, officials
said.
Taylor received Ecowas executive secretary Mohamed ibn Chambas, the
regional bloc's chief Liberia negotiator and former Nigerian
military ruler Abdusalami Abubakar and its peacekeeping commander
General Festus Okonkwo.
The civilian officials later left Liberia for Nigeria, but Okonkwo
will remain in Monrovia, where he is head of the newly deployed
Ecomil west African peacekeeping force, which began patrols in the
besieged city yesterday.
Taylor, a warlord who became Liberia's elected president in 1997
after a nine-year civil war, is wanted by UN war crimes
investigators and is seen by the international community as an
impediment to a new peace process.
For almost five years he has been fighting a new generation of
rebels and has agreed to step down on Monday as part of moves to
find peace and lift a two-month siege of the capital that has left
250 000 people homeless.
He repeated yesterday in a television interview that he would leave
Liberian shortly after handing over power to vice-president Moses
Blah and take up an offer of political asylum in Nigeria.
No details emerged immediately of Taylor's meeting with the west
African trio, but the officials were thought to have come to
discuss the Ecomil mission, the distribution of aid and Taylor's
eventual departure. – Sapa-AFP.
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