UN troops may quit Liberia
2006-09-26 09:02
New York - The United Nations peacekeepers in Liberia may begin a gradual drawdown of their forces in 2008 if the situation in the West African country continues to improve and security risks are reduced, says a top UN envoy.
Alan Doss, head of the UN mission in Liberia, said the war-ravaged nation had achieved significant improvements in restoring peace and building democracy since President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was inaugurated early this year.
He said peace remained volatile, and violations of an export ban by aid workers remained a concern.
Doss said: "We do underline that the situation remains fragile." He was speaking after briefing the security council at a closed-door meeting on the sidelines of the general assembly ministerial meeting.
Annan visited Liberia
According to Doss: "This is a country that's just emerging from a quarter of a century of growing instability that culminated in a 14-year civil war. And that's not going to be overcome in a few months."
He also presented to the council a recent report by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who visited the country this summer. He noted recent achievements, but stressed that much remained to be done.
Harvard-educated Sirleaf - Africa's first elected female chief of state - was sworn in last January for a six-year term to take charge of Africa's oldest republic, founded by freed American slaves in 1847, but ravaged by coups and a bloody civil war.
Former Liberian President Charles Taylor was in a maximum-security prison in the Netherlands, awaiting trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for allegedly overseeing the murder, rape and mutilation of thousands of people during a civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone.
UN troops expected to begin in 2008
Doss said the UN mission had proposed a set of benchmarks to evaluate improvements in Liberia.
He said if the pace of progress matches the criteria, a gradual drawdown of a 15 000-strong UN peacekeeping force is expected to begin in 2008.
According to Doss: "We are in a consolidation phase now, which we expect to last basically until the end of next year, and all being well, security conditions permitting, we will then move into a gradual drawdown phase."
He said: "But it's early days yet. The president has been in office barely eight, nine months, so we have to be cautiously optimistic as we move forward."
Security was the top concern, underscoring the need to "deal robustly if threats emerge within the country or externally".
Doss conceded that recovery efforts were also undermined by reports of violations by international aid workers of export embargoes, which the UN put on Liberia during Taylor's rule, to stop government revenues from being used to fuel civil war.
- AP