Liberian factions due to pick interim leader ( 2003-08-21 09:22) (Agencies)
Liberia's warring factions kept up discussions
into Thursday to try to pick a leader to guide the war-ruined West African state
out of a generation of strife and toward elections in two years.
Liberians buy food in a market in Monrovia
August 20, 2003. Liberia's warring factions were due to sit down together
on Wednesday to choose the leader of a two-year transition government
meant to end 14 years of bloodshed and prepare for elections.
[Reuters]
Meeting in Ghana, the government delegation and two rebel groups have to
agree on a name from a shortlist of three candidates drawn up by political
parties and other interest groups to replace President Moses Blah in October.
Blah stepped in as a caretaker after pariah leader Charles Taylor flew into
exile in Nigeria last week.
The choice is between former U.N. official and vigorous Taylor opponent Ellen
Johnson-Sirleaf, Rudolph Sherman who heads a coalition regarded as broadly
sympathetic to Taylor, and Monrovia businessman Gyude Bryant of the Liberia
Action Party.
Delegates said Bryant's chances were strengthened by the fact that the other
two candidates are seen as more polarized, though all were tight-lipped on their
own choice.
"We will keep an open mind. Whatever will end the war is what we are looking
for," Foreign Minister Lewis Brown, heading the government negotiators, told
Reuters.
After meeting together on Wednesday, the groups were discussing the issue
separately before joining for a full session and a final decision.
West African mediators are desperate to end a crisis that has poisoned their
region and said they had told delegates there was no time to go back to the bush
to consult comrades as they had wanted.
BLAH TO TOUR REGION
The mediators aim to pick up Blah on Thursday and then take him on a regional
tour to try to seal the peace process, going first to countries accused of
backing the rebels -- Ivory Coast, Guinea and Sierra Leone -- then to regional
power Nigeria.
Taylor's departure paved the way for rebels of Liberians United for
Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) to hand over control of parts of Liberia's
capital Monrovia to a regional peacekeeping force backed by U.S. Marines and
aircraft.
But with some armed rebels still around, security is still a huge concern to
aid agencies desperately trying to get emergency supplies in through the
devastated port to help hundreds of thousands of people left destitute by the
war.
The new government will share power between political parties, the outgoing
administration and the two rebel groups who control more than two-thirds of
Liberia.
Hundreds of thousands of people were forced from their homes and 2,000 killed
in the most recent spell of bloodletting to seize a country where a civil war
killed 200,000 in the 1990s.
Taylor emerged as the strongest warlord from that fighting and was elected
president in 1997. But his civil war foes soon took up arms against
him.
