Bush vows to back peace deal in Liberia

US President George W Bush yesterday pledged to work with the United Nations and African states to maintain a fragile ceasefire in Liberia, but said no decision had been made yet on sending US peacekeepers.

In an early setback as Washington assesses involvement in any peacekeeping mission, forces loyal to President Charles Taylor stopped US military experts from visiting a refugee camp outside the Liberian capital yesterday, witnesses said.

Bush also used the first stop of an African trip to stand on a Senegalese shore from which Africans were once dispatched to the Americas in chains, to brand slavery one of history’s greatest crimes.