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Polity
Published: 02 Jun 2003
Liberian peace talks set for Ghana
Liberian President Charles Taylor and rebels fighting his regime since 1999 will meet face to face for the first time from Wednesday in Ghana to try and end a festering war that has spread chaos in West Africa.

The three-day parleys under the aegis of the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) and a United Nations-backed contact group on Liberia are being touted by the organisers as a make-or-break chance for peace.

The talks will be held in Akosombo, near the Ghanaian capital Accra.

The Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd) main rebel group, fighting Taylor for four years, has agreed to show up despite voicing security fears earlier.

A new insurgent movement, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (Model), which recently emerged in southern Liberia, also said it will participate.

The two groups together hold up to 60% of the territory with the government controlling a conclave zone in the centre.

The belligerents hold widely divergent positions.

"Akosombo is a glorious opportunity to move forward," Liberian Defence Minister Daniel Chea said.

"Our brothers and sisters may realise that what they have been doing is wrong because the future of Liberia is better off in a democratic process than in a fighting process," he said.

"We are not the aggressors. We won over 75% of the vote," he said referring to the 1997 presidential elections won by Taylor, a warlord in an earlier seven-year conflict during which former President Samuel Doe was killed.

Doe's brother Chayee, the national vice-chairman for administration in the Lurd, said: "We have our own course of action, that President Taylor resigns, then we will agree to a ceasefire".

He played coy when asked if the dialogue would achieve results.

"I wouldn't want to hatch any eggs before Ecowas and the International Contact Group on Liberia unveil what is on the programme," he said.

The talks are being brokered by former Nigerian dictator general Abdulsalami Abubakar, mandated by Ecowas to mediate an end to the war.

The Contact Group, set up last September, is made up of the United Nations, the European Union, Ecowas, the African Union, the US, France, Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana and Morocco.

Taylor plans to hold presidential elections in October but the opposition, the rebels and the USs have said the current conditions will not make for a free, fair and transparent poll.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers, who visited Liberia this month, cited staggering statistics: 80% of the population living in acute poverty, 85% unemployment and 10 of the 15% lucky enough to have work not receiving their salaries regularly.

The latest bout of unrest, which broke out in 1999 - two years after the end of a seven-year civil war that killed some 250 000 people - has forced some 300 000 Liberians to flee to neighbouring countries, stretching their already meagre resources.

Taylor is under UN sanctions for his alleged support to Sierra Leonean rebels in the neighbouring country's brutal 10-year civil war which claimed some 200 000 lives and was declared formally ended only in January last year.

The sanctions include an arms embargo and a ban on international travel for senior officials.

The embargo on travel was also extended to the Lurd by the UN this month.

Taylor has violated the arms embargo, saying he needed weapons to fight the Lurd, which he alleges is backed by the US and Guinea.

Both Taylor's forces and the rebels have been slammed by international rights groups for widespread killing, torture, sexual slavery and conscripting child fighters.

Each side accuses the other of sweeping rights violations.

The Lurd rebels have marched on the doorstep of Monrovia, the seaside capital, but failed to take the city despite repeated threats to do so.

Taylor, meanwhile, has rejected power-sharing to end the war. – Sapa-AFP.