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Taylor counterattacks
29/07/2003 17:22 - (SA)
Alexandra Zavis
Monrovia - President Charles Taylor's forces launched what government military officials called a major counterattack on Tuesday on the key port of Buchanan, battling to take back Liberia's second-largest city a day after it fell to insurgents.
Military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, reported a "big figh"' at the southeastern port city, Buchanan.
Officials said Taylor's forces also were struggling to take back Taylor's northern stronghold of Gbarnga, which like Buchanan fell to insurgents on Monday.
Battles around the country came with rebels of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy movement still pressing their 10-day siege of the capital, amid fighting that has killed hundreds of civilians.
Rebels hold the port, cutting off warehouses filled with food from the increasingly hungry and disease-ridden populace of more than 1.3 million.
Aid workers, tending to malnourished children in the capital, decried the loss of Buchanan, which had been the last significant port left in government hands.
Emaciated babies
"Buchanan was the only alternative way to ship some food into Liberia. Now - you can forget about it," Frederic Bardou said at a feeding centre in Monrovia run by Action Contre la Faim, or Action Against Hunger.
Around him, emaciated babies hung from their mothers' shoulders at the centre.
Rebels have waged a 3-year campaign to oust Taylor, a former warlord blamed for 14 years of near-perpetual conflict in the once leading West African country.
Monday's attack on Buchanan marked a return to full-scale fighting by the country's second, smaller rebel group, Movement for Democracy in Liberia.
Unlike the Liberians United group, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia until recently largely had heeded ceasefire pledges made at off-and-on peace talks in Accra, Ghana.
In Accra, West African mediators convened envoys of Liberia's government and the two rebel groups to urge all sides to abide by a repeatedly flouted June 17 truce.
Non-negotiable
"We are asking them to ceasefire immediately," said Sunny Ugoh, spokesperson of the leading West African regional bloc. "This will not be negotiable."
West African leaders have promised a multinational peace force for Liberia almost since rebels launched their siege of Monrovia in early June.
The United States, which oversaw founding of Liberia by freed American slaves in the 19th century, has ordered US troops off Liberia for possible support of any West African-led peace force.
Debt-strapped Nigeria, West Africa's military power, has offered to send at least two battalions - but says it needs help from the United States in particular with the costs.
The latest West African, UN and US talks on the peace force ended Monday with no sign of progress on deployment.
West African diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the talks brought no agreement on support for the mission, and that no deployment date could be set until that happened.
International assistance
The diplomats insisted West African nations needed more international assistance for the peace force to deploy.
Pressure has been heaviest on the United States, which has confirmed $10 million in support for the deployment - enough only to pay a few days' costs of any substantial mission.
In neighboring Sierra Leone, a Nigerian battalion of 776 men was moving Tuesday to a UN airport, at the town of Hastings. Men there would train for Liberia and await any directive.
'The morale of the troops is very high and combat-ready to move into Liberia when the order is given," a UN military spokesperson in Sierra Leone, Major Aliyu Yusuf, said.
The US assistant secretary of state for Africa, Walter Kansteiner, was expected Wednesday in Guinea, which is alleged to be supporting the key rebel group, Liberians United.
West African authorities said presidents of Nigeria and Ghana might also be travelling to Guinea.
- AP
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