Liberia's government was to start peace talks with rebels in earnest on
Thursday under pressure to avoid a bloodbath in the capital and end violence
that has poisoned West Africa for more than a decade.
Mediators have pushed President Charles Taylor and the main rebel faction
into agreeing a cease-fire for talks in Ghana, offering at least temporary
respite for hundreds of thousands of terrified Liberians packed into Monrovia.
But mistrust runs deep between Liberian foes who well remember more than a
dozen peace deals signed and broken during a war in the 1990s. Many old faces
from that war, which cost 200,000 lives, joined the new rebellion three years
ago.
The president, himself a former warlord, is under United Nations sanctions
for fueling regional instability and was indicted by a U.N.-backed court last
week for a suspected part in Sierra Leone's savage war.
Rebels of the main Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD)
faction and a group known as Model control at least two-thirds of a country
founded by freed American slaves and now ruined by years of killing and plunder.
Talks stalled last week after LURD attacked Monrovia and the court indicted
Taylor when he was at the opening ceremony, but West African leaders are
desperate to end the crisis that has spilled a generation of killers into their
region.
Mediators hope to secure a permanent cease-fire this week.
The sole demand of both rebel factions is for Taylor to quit, so that
elections can be held without him. All factions have their origins in the tribal
divisions exacerbated by the first war, sharpened by the desire for power and
loot.
Taylor has offered to step down for peace, but few think he would if it was
likely to lead him before the court. Diplomats suspect he would rather fight to
the death like Samuel Doe -- the brutal dictator he launched a war to oust in
1989.
The court has said it will not drop its indictment and has asked the United
Nations to strengthen measures to bring Taylor to trial, but U.N. Security
Council diplomats said the request would have to take a back seat to
peacemaking.
In Monrovia, the shifting battalions of terrified civilians would accept
almost anything that could prevent the kind of fighting that left streets strewn
with bodies in the last war.
On the ground, witnesses said rebels had moved back beyond Po River Bridge,
some 12 km (eight miles) from the outskirts of Monrovia after pushing to just
five km (three miles) from the center early this week.
For the first time in six days, there were no reports of fresh fighting on
Wednesday, but conditions in Monrovia remained desperate with aid workers saying
up to one million people were displaced. Food and water are in short supply.
