Liberia's Taylor agrees to cede power

Pressured by peers, U.S. and rebels, Liberia's Taylor agrees to cede power

ALEXANDRA ZAVIS, Associated Press Writer Saturday, August 2, 2003



(08-02) 13:11 PDT MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) --

Pressured by fellow West African leaders, President Charles Taylor promised Saturday to resign Aug. 11 after the expected arrival of peacekeepers, as his forces stepped up their battle against rebels for Monrovia's port.

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Taylor said he would step down the morning of Aug. 11 "and the new guy will have to be sworn in by midday." But he refused to say when he would leave Liberia, as he has promised to do previously, and as West African leaders and the United States have demanded.

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Taylor has said he will hand power to one of two longtime colleagues -- Nyundueh Monkomana, Liberia's speaker of the house, or Moses Blah, his vice president.

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Taylor has been promising to surrender power since June 4, when a U.N.-Sierra Leone court announced a war-crimes indictment against him for his support of rebels there in a brutal civil war.

He also has made and broken other accords in 14 years of Liberian conflict, which Taylor, then a warlord, started as the leader of a small insurgency in 1989.


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Blah, the vice president said Saturday that Taylor set two conditions for leaving once he cedes power: that an adequate number of peacekeepers are on the ground, and that the war crimes indictment against him be dropped.

U.N. prosecutors are adamant that Taylor face justice, raising the prospect of a standoff blocking his departure.


http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/08/02/international1409EDT0537.DTL

For all those who say the U.N. is useless, when they pull this one off that should put some of that talk to rest.