Taylor protests peak as US deliberates
“Taylor must go” and “No more Taylor, we want Bush,” chanted more than 400 people outside the US embassy as American Marines in flak jackets and helmets kept watch from behind sandbagged posts on the roof.
Across the battered coastal capital, a few hundred Taylor supporters gathered in a football stadium to show their support for a former warlord who never looked so vulnerable.
Long regarded as the instigator of West Africa’s tangled conflicts, Mr Taylor has been indicted for war crimes by an international court and besieged by rebels who want him out.
Even some of his own supporters said Taylor would have to step down, but they argued the US-educated leader should be given time to leave and not pushed out abruptly.
Mr Bush has called on Mr Taylor to quit Liberia, a nation founded by freed American slaves in the 19th century. The United States is considering sending troops to help ensure peace.
At the US embassy, people waved branches in a sign of peace. “Taylor must go” was chalked on the road in front of walls topped with razor wire.
“I am calling on the president to resign for the sake of peace,” said one protester, Reverend Sherman.
Mr Taylor’s supporters said the indictment should be lifted and warned the Americans against any swift change of power.
“We feel that it will bring chaos. We want them to deploy a peacekeeping force here and set up an interim government,” said Victor Toatoe.
Liberia’s crisis hangs over Mr Bush’s visit to Africa next week, with the United States under pressure to act because of its historical ties to Liberia.
After 14 years of almost non-stop violence, Liberia is a ruined international pariah, overrun by a generation of drugged-up, drunken fighters who have spread chaos in the region.
Many Liberians think only US troops can save them.
Officials in Washington said the Pentagon was looking at possibly sending hundreds of US troops, with contingency plans drawn up for a deployment of up to 2,000.
Diplomats say any deployment would be complicated by the UN-backed court’s indictment, which Mr Taylor wants lifted.
Many West African leaders say that rather than see Mr Taylor on trial, they would like to end Liberia’s war.
But prosecutors at the court in Sierra Leone say they will pursue Mr Taylor, who is wanted for his role in that country’s civil war.
US officials also remember the humiliating US withdrawal from a humanitarian mission to Somalia in 1993 after 18 Americans were killed, and Liberia does not carry the same strategic importance as Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mr Taylor has offered to step down at the end of his elected mandate in January, but he wants the indictment lifted.
Mr Taylor won elections in 1997 after emerging dominant from a war in which 200,000 people died in the 1990s. His foes from that conflict started a new struggle to oust him three years ago and now control nearly two-thirds of the country.
UN diplomats say Mr Taylor has already rejected an offer of asylum from Nigeria.
