Liberia wants new peace talks

Liberia's government was to start peace talks with rebels in earnest yesterday under pressure to avoid a bloodbath in the capital and end violence that has poisoned West Africa for more than a decade.

Mediators have pushed President Charles Taylor and the main rebel faction into agreeing a ceasefire for talks in Ghana, offering at least temporary respite for hundreds of thousands of terrified Liberians packed into Monrovia.

But mistrust runs deep between Liberian foes who well remember more than a dozen peace deals signed and broken during a war in the 1990s. Many old faces from that war, which cost 200,000 lives, joined the new rebellion three years ago.

The president, himself a former warlord, is under UN sanctions for fuelling regional instability and was indicted by a UN-backed court last week for a suspected part in Sierra Leone's savage war.

Rebels of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) faction and a group known as Model control at least two-thirds of a country founded by freed American slaves and now ruined by years of killing and plunder.

Talks stalled last week after LURD attacked Monrovia and the court indicted Taylor when he was at the opening ceremony, but West African leaders are desperate to end the crisis that has spilled a generation of killers into their region.

Mediators hope to secure a permanent ceasefire this week.

The sole demand of both rebel factions is for Taylor to quit, so that elections can be held without him. All factions have their origins in the tribal divisions exacerbated by the first war.

Taylor has offered to step down for peace, but few think he would if it was likely to lead him before the court. Diplomats suspect he would rather fight to the death like Samuel Doe -- the brutal dictator he launched a war to oust in 1989.

The court has said it will not drop its indictment and has asked the UN to strengthen measures to bring Taylor to trial, but UN Security Council diplomats said the request would have to take a back seat to peacemaking.

In Monrovia, the battalions of terrified civilians would accept almost anything that could prevent the kind of fighting that left streets strewn with bodies in the last war.

On the ground, witnesses said rebels had moved back beyond Po River Bridge, some 12km from the outskirts of Monrovia after pushing to just five kilometers from the center early this week.

For the first time in six days, there were no reports of fresh fighting on Wednesday, but conditions in Monrovia remained desperate with aid workers saying up to one million people were displaced. Food and water are in short supply.