Businessman takes control of Liberia

Businessman Gyude Bryant took office today as leader of Liberia’s interim post-war government, taking up a two-year term meant to guide the devastated country into peace after 14 years of bloodletting by ousted warlord Charles Taylor.

Bryant, 54, took an oath as chairman – not president – of the transitional power-share government, pledging to take Liberia from a “state of despair.”

“Never again will we Liberians use war as a way of addressing our concerns,” declared Bryant, standing before West African leaders and Liberians in the Capitol rotunda of bullet-riddled Monrovia.

Past and present West African heads of state, some of whom just two months ago had ushered Taylor into exile out of his rebel-besieged capital, looked on.

“Liberia needs to be pulled up by all of us,” President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria told the inauguration audience of heavily guarded rebel leaders, Taylor allies, and international diplomats, before Bryant took the oath.

“If there’s no peace in Liberia, there’s no peace in West Africa,” added Obasanjo, one of the most powerful figures in a region wrought by cross-border insurrections fuelled by Taylor.

Bryant, a longtime campaigner against warlords who stayed in Liberia throughout years of fighting under Taylor, was selected by all sides to lead the interim administration, formally ending Taylor’s government.

A heavy-equipment dealer and leader of a small political party, Bryant led a 1997 effort to unite political parties behind a civilian candidate in Liberia’s first elections after a 1989-1996 civil war.

The six-party alliance’s effort failed, and Taylor won the presidency. Fighting continued, and in the 24 months before Taylor’s exit, sieges in the capital killed more than 1,000 civilians.