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West African peacekeepers were today to build up their strength at Liberia's main airport in preparation for a risky mission to bring stability and humanitarian aid to its wartorn capital Monrovia.

After the arrival of a 300-strong Nigerian advance guard at Robertsfield Airport on Monday was greeted with joy by hundreds of war-weary civilians, the newly formed Ecomil force's next task was to secure the city itself.

There they will face the much harder challenge of securing the delivery of food and medical aid to the 200 000 displaced Liberian non-combatants sheltering in the beleaguered capital, which has been under siege since June 5.

Before the troops can begin to do that, helicopters must ferry in more men and equipment from UN bases in neighbouring Sierra Leone.

Military sources said it would be eight days before the advance force was at full strength.

The full complement of 3 000 to 5 000 men could take up to a month to deploy.

Meanwhile, as night fell on Monrovia, scattered bursts of gunfire could still be heard, despite promises from both President Charles Taylor's loyalist forces and the rebels to respect a ceasefire deal.

Mark, a 19-year-old serving with the "Jungle Lions" pro-Taylor militia, said that most of the firing was now linked to looting, and often involved clashes by former allies on the government side.

"The fighters want to steal things to sell to the peacekeepers when they arrive," he said.

"It is good that they (Ecomil) are here. They should move into the city, to bring stability and peace".

With fighting apparently subsiding - and both sides insisting that they will follow a west African brokered plan to bring to an end Liberia's latest four year bout of civil war - Taylor's role was once again centre stage.

The former warlord has promised the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) that he will step down on Monday, August 11, but it is not yet clear whether he will quit Liberia and go into exile as he has been asked.

In Washington, the White House and the State Department said Taylor, who has been charged with war crimes by a court in Sierra Leone, ought to leave Liberia and face the charges to secure progress in the peace process.

At a news conference in Rome, rebel leader Sekou Damate Conneh - head of the self-styled Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd - said his forces would leave Monrovia as soon as the peace force is in place.

"We are prepared to receive the peacekeepers in Liberia as soon as they deploy in the city and the port to save the civilians there.

We are prepared to withdraw immediately," Conneh told reporters.

Lurd, along with a splinter rebel faction, now controls around four-fifths of the country, an impoverished land of 111 400 square km of bush, swamp and tropical forest on Africa's Atlantic shore.

But they have proved unable or unwilling to capture the capital Monrovia, a port city lying on a string of islands and peninsulas, now teeming with around 200 000 refugees, desperate for food and clean water.

The Ecomil mission has UN backing and for the first month of its existence the force will receive logistical support from the UN force in Liberia, Unamsil, but thereafter it will rely on international funding. – Sapa-AFP.

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