Global Policy Forum

By Somini Sengupta

The day after President Charles Taylor left the country and raised fresh hopes for peace, one set of rebel troops signed an accord agreeing to open up the vital Free Port of Monrovia while another clashed anew with government soldiers in the southeast. Today's developments brought home the difficulties of restoring some sense of normalcy to this destitute country. It also raised the specter of fighting between the two rebel factions, now that their common enemy has departed.

This afternoon, the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, known as L.U.R.D., which occupies at least half the capital, agreed to yield control of the Free Port of Monrovia by noon Thursday and to quit the city altogether and pull back to the Po River, eight miles north of the city limits. By holding the port, the rebels have effectively choked off the food and fuel supply to the rest of Monrovia. In the accord signed this afternoon, the rebels agreed to allow West African peacekeepers to secure the port and allow goods to move freely between the two halves of what has become a partitioned city. The West African peacekeepers would also deploy across the city by Thursday. The first units in what is to be a 3,250-strong force are on the ground now, but have not yet started patrolling in any significant numbers.

The American ambassador here, John W. Blaney, has been pushing for the accord for days. It was signed after rebel leaders met with the commander of a 2,300-member Marine expeditionary force that is poised offshore. The White House, while long insisting on Mr. Taylor's exit as a condition for any direct military involvement in Liberia, has yet to spell out whether American forces will enter the country.

The commander of the American task force for Liberia, Maj. Gen. Thomas R. Turner, met today with Gen. Festus Okonkwo, the Nigerian commander of the peacekeepers, to assess the needs of the West African force. Currently, there are fewer than 100 American military personnel here. At the Pentagon today, a senior Defense Department official said that the United States would consider sending additional "small handfuls" of troops into Liberia to assist peacekeepers, but that American forces would not be a significant portion of the peacekeeping force.

Squeezed by an arms embargo, a war crimes indictment and relentless rebel attacks, Mr. Taylor resigned and went into exile in Nigeria on Monday. Mr. Taylor, 55, who had been a rebel leader for seven years before becoming president in 1997, handed power to his longtime ally and vice president, Moses Z. Blah. Mr. Blah has extended an olive branch to the insurgents, inviting them to join his government until an interim administration can take over in October. Both rebel groups fighting for Mr. Taylor's ouster oppose Mr. Blah's leadership, calling him too close to the former president.

But today, the leadership of the two rebel movements went their separate ways. In some ways, it was a chilling reprise of the last time rebels in Liberia deposed a besieged president. The execution of the former president, Samuel K. Doe, in 1990 opened the floodgates to another six years of civil war between competing rebel factions. Mr. Taylor, then a rebel leader, ultimately won.

The rebels, whose only stated goal thus far has been to depose Mr. Taylor, today floated the notion that they should head the interim government. "We were responsible for the downfall of Charles Taylor," the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy's secretary general for civilian administration, Sekou Fofana, said. "We want to serve in the highest capacity."

Meanwhile, southeast of the capital, another rebel faction, calling itself the Movement for Democracy in Liberia, clashed with government forces and advanced to within 15 miles of the main airport. A contingent of Nigerian peacekeepers based at the airport moved to head off the rebels' advance.

The Liberian defense minister, Daniel Chea, urged West African peacekeepers to move in and stop the fighting. "There is no reason for this," Mr. Chea told Reuters. "Taylor has left, that's what they wanted." The rebel spokesman, Gen. Boi Bleaju Boi, countered: "I do not agree that the war is over. The government elements who have been causing trouble are still in place. They are attacking us."

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