US offers US$2 million for capture of Taylor

Security has been stepped up around former Liberian leader Charles Taylor's home in Nigeria after the US slapped a US$2 million bounty on his head, a source in his camp said Friday.

The source, a former Liberian official who followed Taylor into exile, told reporters that Nigeria had promised to defend the former warlord and accused Washington of inciting violence and risking civilian lives.

"It's an incitement to terrorism, because any bloke in Nigeria who is money-hungry could take up that offer. Imagine the bloodshed," he said.

"We're prepared for the worst," he said, adding that the Nigerian security personnel deployed around Taylor's luxury villa in the southeastern city port city of Calabar had been reinforced.

The US Congress included a US$2 million reward for Taylor's capture in its US$87.5 billion special budget for Iraq and Afghanistan, which President George W. Bush signed into law on Thursday.

The money has been set aside to help bring Taylor before a special tribunal on war crimes in Liberia's neighbor, Sierra Leone.

Asked whether the money could be paid as a reward to anyone who seized Taylor and managed to bring him out to Sierra Leone, the official replied: "Theoretically, yes, I suppose so."

Before Taylor agreed to step down as Liberia's president, a British-based "private military company", Northbridge Services, was reported as having offered to kidnap him for US$2 million.

But west African mediators, with US support, preferred to encourage Taylor to take up the offer of exile in Nigeria.