Frightened Liberians ready to welcome peacekeepers

Frightened residents of Liberia’s besieged capital Monrovia were preparing to welcome the first troops from a regional peacekeeping force today.

But the soldiers’ Nigerian commander said the first contingent of his men will only secure the government-held airport.

More than 1,000 people have died in a two month rebel siege that has all but cut off food and clean water supplies in the city of 1.3 million, which is swollen with refugees from across the country.

Residents bought white T-shirts and gathered white cloths to wave in the most festive greeting Monrovia’s people could offer the promised deployment of the Nigerian-led peacekeepers.

The first troops were expected to land in helicopters that set off from bases in neighbouring Sierra Leone.

Nigerian Brig Gen Festus Okonkwo, the force commander, said he was not sure how many soldiers could be moved in today – partly because of fears there will not be enough aircraft to carry them.

“We are going in with as much troops as possible,” he said last night in Sierra Leone. “We know that the situation is bad in and around Monrovia.”

The first forces would only secure the government-held airport, Okonkwo said. The airport is about a 45 minute drive on a government-held road from the capital, where fighting has raged every day between President Charles Taylor’s fighters and rebels battling to overthrow him.

Okonkwo said he expected no attacks against today’s deployment, and said he had called on both sides to tell their fighters to return to their positions at the time they signed a repeatedly-broken June 17 ceasefire.

The 300 Nigerian troops to be deployed today are the vanguard of a 3,250-member West African force.

Taylor, a former warlord, pledged on Saturday to give up power on August 11 - meeting one demand by fellow African leaders and the United States.

But Taylor’s aides yesterday hedged on his recent promises to go into exile in Nigeria – saying their boss’s agreement to yield power should be enough.

He has been promising that since June 4, when a United Nations-Sierra Leone court revealed a war crimes indictment against him for his support of rebels there in a brutal civil war.

The US has demanded that Taylor go. He is blamed for 14 years of conflict in Liberia that have killed more than 100,000 people since 1989, and accused of trafficking and arming rebels across much of the region.