Nigerian president offers asylum to Taylor

THE leader of Nigeria headed for Liberia yesterday to offer embattled President Charles Taylor asylum in his country, as a US military team prepared to begin a mission to study whether American troops should be sent to Liberia

Taylor the warlord-turned-president who has been indicted on war crimes charges and is holed up in a capital surrounded by rebel forces waited at Monrovia's airport to receive Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Hundreds of Taylor supporters gathered outside, waving banners, as the Liberian leader sporting a cream-coloured suit pulled up to the airport in a limousine.

Nigerian presidential aides said at midday yesterday that Obasanjo had departed for Liberia. Nigeria is offering to take Taylor in until he finds permanent exile in a third country.

Taylor is under intense international pressure to step down to allow peace efforts to go ahead in the war-torn nation, where last month hundreds of civilians were killed as rebels assaulted the capital.

US President George W Bush due to start a visit to Africa todayok has demanded that Taylor resign. "I suspect he will," Bush said in radio comments aired on Saturday."I'm not going to take 'no' for an answer."

Bush is still considering whether to send US troops to participate in an international force tasked with enforcing a ceasefire in Liberia, a country founded in the 19th century by former American slaves.

A US scout team made up of 15 experts and their security was preparing to leave Rota, Spain and head for Liberia last night, said a European Command spokesman, Master Sgt. John Tomassi, in Frankfurt, Germany.

Bush has said the team will assess how the United States can help an intervention force to be deployed to stabilise Liberia. West African leaders have put up 3,000 troops for a force and added their voices to the chorus calling for US soldiers to lead the mission.

But the leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday said they want Bush to get congressional approval before any US troops are sent to Liberia.

Sen John Warner, the Armed Services Committee chairman, said that because of the chaotic conditions of the past few years in Liberia.

"We've got to think through very carefully the insertion of US forces in there." Taylor, who has broken promises before, has pledged to quit his office when a force arrives.