Charles G. Taylor, a star player in this country's 14 years of sporadic civil war, resigned from the presidency today and left his country for exile in Nigeria. "History will be kind to me," Mr. Taylor said, addressing the crowd in a sweltering second-floor room inside the Executive Mansion that had been packed for the ceremony with Liberian politicians, three African heads of state and foreign journalists. "I have accepted this role as the sacrificial lamb."
Sounding alternately bombastic, chipper and defiant, Mr. Taylor, 55, as usual likened himself to Jesus, blamed international forces for his downfall and challenged the United States in particular to step in, now that he had done his part. President Bush called on Mr. Taylor to leave Liberia more than two months ago and made his exit a condition for any American involvement in peacekeeping here.
Dressed in white, Mr. Taylor handed over the presidency to his longtime ally and vice president, Moses Z. Blah. Mr. Blah will steer the country until a new transitional government takes over in mid-October, President John Kufuor of Ghana announced today.
Mr. Taylor, accused of spreading conflict across the region, has been under a United Nations arms embargo and has been charged with playing a role in the civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone. "I want to thank Mr. Bush, even though we have had some disagreements," Mr. Taylor said, adding that he was confident that as a Christian, Mr. Bush would soon see the truth. "He's been misled," he offered. "God will reveal the truth to him."
The White House, under competing pressure for and against intervention to restore security to this crushed nation founded by Americans 150 years ago, has yet to decide to what extent it will engage in Liberia. Three American warships appeared on the horizon here today, apparently more for show than anything else at the moment. Two helicopters hovered from a warship to ferry supplies to the American Embassy this afternoon. "Today's departure of Charles Taylor from Liberia is an important step toward a better future for the Liberian people," Mr. Bush said in remarks this afternoon in Aurora, Colo. "The United States will work with the Liberian people and with the international community to achieve a lasting peace after more than a decade of turmoil and suffering."
It was not clear when the Americans, or the West African peacekeepers who are already on the ground here, would secure the vital Free Port of Monrovia to open the lifeline for food and fuel to the rest of the city. The port is in the hands of Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, a rebel group. In Washington this afternoon, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said the commander of the Marine Expeditionary Unit off Liberia's coast would come ashore, probably on Tuesday, to discuss how to assist in getting aid supplies into the port. "They have agreed to leave upon a turnover," Mr. Powell said of the rebels, adding that the West African mission in Liberia "will be in the lead." "The United States is there to see how we can assist them," he said.
Monrovians rushed to the beach at the first sight of the American ships late this afternoon. They stared out at the sea, anxious and hopeful. "We eat something now," said an optimistic Koko Wreh, 40, a resident of the rebel-held side of the city who was seeking shelter in an overflowing building on the government side. "I'm tired of fighting," said Johnson B. Sulonteh, 20, a government soldier sitting on sandbags near the beach. "I'm ready to go back to school."
Peace talks between government and two rebel factions have been under way in Ghana's capital, Accra, for more than two months. "The war in Liberia has ended," said Mr. Kufuor, the Ghanian president. Mr. Kufuor, who currently leads the regional bloc known as the Economic Community of West African States, escorted Mr. Taylor and his family to Nigeria this afternoon. Waving a white handkerchief to a crowd that rushed onto the tarmac to wave and weep, Mr. Taylor boarded a Nigerian government jet. West African officials said he was bound for the capital, Abuja. The Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, had offered Mr. Taylor a safe haven.
The first of 3,250 West African troops have begun arriving in Monrovia, but so far have done little more than erect checkpoints near the Executive Mansion. A United Nations peacekeeping force is expected to take over this fall. President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, at the handover ceremony today, pledged to contribute troops. "It has indeed been a shameful thing that as Africans, we have killed ourselves for such a long time"' he said. "It is indeed time this war should come to an end."
Mr. Taylor's exit, while it closes one page in Liberia's sad history, also paves the way for new challenges. The warring parties must agree on an interim government before elections can be held. The port must be opened and desperately needed aid delivered. Soldiers on both sides must be offered reasons not to pick up their guns again. Before anything, the fighters who still control their patches of the city, on opposite sides of a set of strategic bridges, must be told what to do. Confusion reigned today after Mr. Taylor's resignation, as rebels in Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, known as L.U.R.D., pranced on their part of what is called the New Bridge, and began taunting the government side's chief. Shots were fired in the air. Then, throngs of civilians from both sides tried to press through, meeting again midway, only to driven back by the gun-toting youths who rule each side. Neither side had agreed to open up the bridges.
A commander on the government side, Gus Menwon, said he was awaiting orders. His men were asking him who would take care of them now. Asked if reconciliation was possible, he first waxed optimistic, saying many fighters on the other side were his friends. But then, he added, "It's hard to trust human beings." Shots were fired in the air jubilantly this afternoon, after news came of Mr. Taylor's exit. Around sundown, chaos erupted for a little while, as rebel fighters started shooting in the air to blow off steam, witnesses said. Apparently, two of their men had been executed for killing civilians. "For us in L.U.R.D., the war is over," said the rebels' secretary general for civilian administration, Sekou Fofana.
The rebels had been rankled by the choice of Mr. Blah as president, preferring someone they considered more neutral. Today, Mr. Blah, 56, reiterated his invitation to the rebels to join the interim government. "Let the nation begin to heal," Mr. Blah said. "Let all of us unite as one people and work to peace."
Source: New York Times
Showing posts with label John Kufuor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Kufuor. Show all posts
Monday, August 11, 2003
Thursday, June 5, 2003
War Crimes Indictment of Liberian President Is Disclosed
President Charles Taylor of Liberia, widely viewed as a wellspring of the violence that has ravaged West Africa, has been indicted on war crimes charges by a special court in Sierra Leone that accused him of ''bearing the greatest responsibility'' for a decade's worth of murders, mutilations and rapes in the neighboring country. He is the second serving national leader to be indicted on war crimes charges in the last decade. The first was Slobodan Milosevic, who was indicted by the tribunal in The Hague while he was president.
The indictment by the court, run jointly by the United Nations and the Sierra Leone government, was originally issued on March 7. It was made public today shortly after Mr. Taylor, bowing to pressure from the leaders of Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa, announced that he would step down by the end of the year. Diplomatic officials and news reports from the region described a surreal diplomatic drama in which Mr.
Taylor was transformed from statesman to fugitive in a matter of minutes. The announcement came at the opening of a peace conference convened in Accra, Ghana, and designed to end Liberia's current civil war. Just after being applauded for his retirement announcement, Mr. Taylor left the peace conference abruptly and caught a plane home rather than risk arrest by his Ghanaian hosts. In the brief time that elapsed between the announcement of the indictment and Mr. Taylor's departure, various Ghanaian officials and West African diplomats said they did not know whether they would attempt an arrest, since Mr. Taylor's status as a head of state grants him automatic immunity from such actions, under various international treaties.
The train of events left deep frustration in at least two quarters, diplomatic officials said today. One senior United States official said today that Presidents Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and John Kufuor of Ghana felt sandbagged by the release of the indictment on the heels of their successful effort to get Mr. Taylor to resign. But both the Ghanaian government's delays and indecision about arresting Mr. Taylor, and his subsequent return home, left both the war crimes prosecutor's office and some Republican members of the international affairs committee of the United States House of Representatives confused or angry.
In a telephone interview, Luc Copè, the chief of prosecution for the court in Sierra Leone, said: ''We don't have any power of arrest. We depend on a state to execute our orders.'' He added, ''We can serve the warrant of arrest on Liberia. But that would be asking him to arrest himself.''
The indictment itself provided, in stilted legal language, a capsule history of the allegations of crossborder alliances between Mr. Taylor and insurgents in Sierra Leone, and his reported support for a war on civilians that left upwards of 200,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands more maimed or raped or homeless in the late 1990's.
Mr. Taylor originally was a rebel warlord in his own country, and on coming to power, his accusers have charged, he helped rebel groups in neighboring countries, effectively franchising out his own civil war first to Sierra Leone and later to the Ivory Coast. In the case of Sierra Leone, one of the prizes in the conflict was access to Sierra Leone's wealth of diamond mines. ''Victims were routinely shot, hacked to death and burned to death,'' in Sierra Leone, one count of the new indictment said. Another said ''widespread sexual violence committed against civilian women and girls included brutal rapes, often by multiple rapists.''
A third count, involving the mutilations of civilians whose limbs were hacked off, charged that ''these mutilations included cutting off limbs and carving'' the initials of rebel groups on the bodies of the victims. The war crimes court in Sierra Leone, created jointly by the United Nations and Sierra Leone's government 18 months ago, has already indicted several militia leaders from the Revolutionary United Front and the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, who made common cause with Mr. Taylor's government.
The indictment unsealed today charged that Mr. Taylor had ''to obtain access to the mineral wealth of the Republic of Sierra Leone, in particular the diamond wealth of Sierra Leone, and to destabilize the state'' provided ''financial support, military training, personnel, arms, ammunition'' and other support to the R.U.F., which in turn allied itself with the A.F.R.C.
In a statement released in Freetown today, the chief prosecutor of the special court, David M. Crane, said that he had unsealed the indictment when he learned Mr. Taylor would be in Ghana for the peace talks, and thus would be susceptible to arrest. He added, ''To ensure the legitimacy of these negotiations, it is imperative that the attendees know they are dealing with an indicted war criminal.''
A member of Mr. Crane's staff, contacted by telephone in Freeport on Tuesday night, said that the news of the indictment prompted ''cheering in the streets'' of Sierra Leone's capital. In Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, The Associated Press reported that thousands of panicked civilians were running home from work to find their children, apparently fearful of renewed civil strife if Mr. Taylor's government fell.
Mr. Taylor's announcement today that he would resign was made, in the third person, to warm applause, The Associated Press reported. ''It has become apparent that some people believe that Taylor is the problem,'' he said. ''President Taylor wants to say that he intends to remove himself from the process.''
Sourc: New York Times
The indictment by the court, run jointly by the United Nations and the Sierra Leone government, was originally issued on March 7. It was made public today shortly after Mr. Taylor, bowing to pressure from the leaders of Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa, announced that he would step down by the end of the year. Diplomatic officials and news reports from the region described a surreal diplomatic drama in which Mr.
Taylor was transformed from statesman to fugitive in a matter of minutes. The announcement came at the opening of a peace conference convened in Accra, Ghana, and designed to end Liberia's current civil war. Just after being applauded for his retirement announcement, Mr. Taylor left the peace conference abruptly and caught a plane home rather than risk arrest by his Ghanaian hosts. In the brief time that elapsed between the announcement of the indictment and Mr. Taylor's departure, various Ghanaian officials and West African diplomats said they did not know whether they would attempt an arrest, since Mr. Taylor's status as a head of state grants him automatic immunity from such actions, under various international treaties.
The train of events left deep frustration in at least two quarters, diplomatic officials said today. One senior United States official said today that Presidents Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and John Kufuor of Ghana felt sandbagged by the release of the indictment on the heels of their successful effort to get Mr. Taylor to resign. But both the Ghanaian government's delays and indecision about arresting Mr. Taylor, and his subsequent return home, left both the war crimes prosecutor's office and some Republican members of the international affairs committee of the United States House of Representatives confused or angry.
In a telephone interview, Luc Copè, the chief of prosecution for the court in Sierra Leone, said: ''We don't have any power of arrest. We depend on a state to execute our orders.'' He added, ''We can serve the warrant of arrest on Liberia. But that would be asking him to arrest himself.''
The indictment itself provided, in stilted legal language, a capsule history of the allegations of crossborder alliances between Mr. Taylor and insurgents in Sierra Leone, and his reported support for a war on civilians that left upwards of 200,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands more maimed or raped or homeless in the late 1990's.
Mr. Taylor originally was a rebel warlord in his own country, and on coming to power, his accusers have charged, he helped rebel groups in neighboring countries, effectively franchising out his own civil war first to Sierra Leone and later to the Ivory Coast. In the case of Sierra Leone, one of the prizes in the conflict was access to Sierra Leone's wealth of diamond mines. ''Victims were routinely shot, hacked to death and burned to death,'' in Sierra Leone, one count of the new indictment said. Another said ''widespread sexual violence committed against civilian women and girls included brutal rapes, often by multiple rapists.''
A third count, involving the mutilations of civilians whose limbs were hacked off, charged that ''these mutilations included cutting off limbs and carving'' the initials of rebel groups on the bodies of the victims. The war crimes court in Sierra Leone, created jointly by the United Nations and Sierra Leone's government 18 months ago, has already indicted several militia leaders from the Revolutionary United Front and the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, who made common cause with Mr. Taylor's government.
The indictment unsealed today charged that Mr. Taylor had ''to obtain access to the mineral wealth of the Republic of Sierra Leone, in particular the diamond wealth of Sierra Leone, and to destabilize the state'' provided ''financial support, military training, personnel, arms, ammunition'' and other support to the R.U.F., which in turn allied itself with the A.F.R.C.
In a statement released in Freetown today, the chief prosecutor of the special court, David M. Crane, said that he had unsealed the indictment when he learned Mr. Taylor would be in Ghana for the peace talks, and thus would be susceptible to arrest. He added, ''To ensure the legitimacy of these negotiations, it is imperative that the attendees know they are dealing with an indicted war criminal.''
A member of Mr. Crane's staff, contacted by telephone in Freeport on Tuesday night, said that the news of the indictment prompted ''cheering in the streets'' of Sierra Leone's capital. In Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, The Associated Press reported that thousands of panicked civilians were running home from work to find their children, apparently fearful of renewed civil strife if Mr. Taylor's government fell.
Mr. Taylor's announcement today that he would resign was made, in the third person, to warm applause, The Associated Press reported. ''It has become apparent that some people believe that Taylor is the problem,'' he said. ''President Taylor wants to say that he intends to remove himself from the process.''
Sourc: New York Times
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