Liberia agrees to pull troops from restive area

Liberian authorities have agreed to pull government forces from a main road connecting the newly calm capital Monrovia with the country’s volatile interior, paving the way for African peacekeepers’ first countryside deployment a day later, the defence minister said today.

The peacekeepers’ deployment, originally planned for yesterday, was postponed by Defence Minister Daniel Chea, who said it couldn’t take place until his fighters were sent elsewhere.

Peacekeepers blamed the delay on a “lack of co-ordination” with the Defence Ministry.

On Sunday, Chea said he’d given orders for the removal of “over 3,000 from the main road”, adding his fighters would be sent into off-road areas around the town of Totota, which saw streams of refugees fleeing what they believed was a rebel advance last week.

A scout team of peacekeeping forces headed north of Monrovia on Sunday to check the withdrawal, top force official Colonel Theophilus Tawiah said.

He said a contingent of about 600 Guinea Bissau troops would move Monday to the area, which saw 50,000 Liberians fleeing what they believed was fighting between rebels and government troops last week.

All sides have been accused of staging phoney attacks to scare Liberians conditioned by 14 years of war into fleeing their homes, ostensibly to loot them.

The peacekeepers are expected to establish a stronghold at Kakata – a midway point between Monrovia and reported frontlines – and then fan out “thinly” up the road around Totota, Tawiah said.

Rebels are about 18 miles beyond Totota, but deny making advances since an August 18 peace agreement between Liberia’s government and rebels, who’ve been battling since 1999 to oust Charles Taylor, the former president who stepped down last month and went into exile in Nigeria.

Tawiah said 95 soldiers from Ghana arrived in Liberia late Saturday night, bringing the peace force to nearly 3,150. Another 130 Ghanian troops are expected Sunday. The force, which first landed in Liberia August 4, is expected to reach its full strength of 3,500 soldiers by Wednesday.

Rebels who had besieged Monrovia since early June pulled back from the city in August and peacekeepers have since spread through Monrovia, bringing relative order. Over 1,000 civilians died in the fighting.

Reports of strife in Liberia’s interior have continued, however, causing thousands to flee. As a result, residents and aid workers are clamouring for peacekeepers to start moving into the insecure interior.

Most of the African peacekeepers are expected to be wrapped into a new United Nations force in October. The UN’s special envoy to Liberia – Jacques Klein, an American – hope the UN force will grow to 15,000 men.

President Moses Blah, Taylor’s former deputy and anointed successor, is scheduled to hand over power to a power-sharing government on October 14 that was arranged under the peace accord.

The new government will eventually cede to a democratically elected administration in 2005.