Yet more delays to Liberian peacekeeping force

West African, US and UN military representatives deliberated again today on a long-promised peace force for warring Liberia.

As they met, shelling persisted in the besieged capital Monrovia and rebels and government forces battled for strategic bridges.

One rocket, fired by President Charles Taylor’s troops from a high building, fell short and ploughed into the bedroom of a home on the government-controlled side of the capital, injuring eight civilians.

As rebels pressed their siege of Monrovia – now in its ninth day – a Nigerian army spokesman said the first peace troops could deploy as soon as tomorrow for a force seen as crucial to ending two months of fighting for the capital.

But that hope was short lived.

In Accra, Ghana, however, another day in what have been weeks of off-and-on talks on the peace mission brought no immediate announcement of any firm deployment date.

Nigerian Brigadier General Festus Okwonkwo, who would oversee any deployment, called deployment this week “unlikely” as he went into meetings with representatives of other West African countries, UN peacekeeping operations and the US military’s European Command.

The United States has said West African nations and the United Nations must take the lead in any multinational rescue mission for Liberia, a West African nation founded by freed American slaves in the 19th century.

Officials of debt-strapped Nigeria, the region’s military power, say debates about who should bear the cost are slowing deployment, and have asked the United States for greater assistance.

As talks play out, shelling and other fighting accompanying rebel assaults on the capital have killed hundreds of civilians since June. With Monrovia’s strategic port in rebel hands, the refugee-choked city of more than 1.3 million is desperately short of food, water and aid. Hunger and disease are building.

Insurgents are driving home their three-year-old war to force out Taylor, a former warlord blamed in 14 years of near-continual conflict in once prosperous Liberia.

Monrovia’s people increasingly speak of the promised peace force with impatience, and despair.

“We are hoping that the peacekeeping forces are coming this week to relieve us of all this misery,” said the Rev. Franklin Holt, president of the capital’s Monrovia College, where up to 2,000 people have taken shelter in the campus’ concrete buildings.

“They are very late,” Holt said of the peacekeepers, as fresh mortar blasts rocked downtown.

“Extremely late.”

Under international pressure to intervene, President George Bush has ordered US ships to take up positions off the coast of Liberia to offer still-unspecified support for a West African-led force.

Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said any American role in the peace force would depend on the West Africans deploying first, and on Taylor leaving.

A Nigerian army spokesman, Colonel Chukwuemeka Onwuamaegbu, said early today that deployment could come by Tuesday.

Okwonko, the brigade commander, indicated later that yet more talks were planned, however.

Of the American role, Okwonko said the United States was promising only logistical support and support at Monrovia’s port. He didn’t elaborate.