Obasanjo to hand over Taylor

2006-03-25 16:50

Abuja - Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo on Saturday agreed to surrender exiled former leader Charles Taylor to Liberia, an official statement said.

"President Olusegun Obasanjo has today, March 25, informed President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf that the Government of Liberia is free to take former president Charles Taylor into custody," the Nigerian leader's office said in a statement.

"President Sirleaf had on March 5 made a formal request to Obasanjo that Taylor be turned over to the custody of the government of Liberia," it added.

Obasanjo, the immediate past chair of the African Union (AU), consulted the current chair of the continental organisation as well as the head of west African regional grouping Ecowas, the statement said.

"Since 2003, the Federal Government of Nigeria has resisted persistent pressures to violate the understanding of 2003 and to deliver Charles Taylor to the Sierra Leone Special Court.

"Rather, the federal government has insisted that Charles Taylor can only be turned over, on request, to a democratically-elected government of Liberia at a time that such a government considers appropriate," it said. Obasanjo said that his only objections to the transfer had been to do with "timing and continued peace in Liberia" and that Liberia was now free to take custody of Taylor.

The statement did not say when this would be done.

- AFP