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Liberian rebel group quits troubled peace conference

The main rebel group in Liberia said Monday it was pulling out of peace talks and accused the top peace mediator of allowing President Charles Taylor to renege on a promise to step down.

Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) demanded that mediator Mohamed Ibn Chambas leave the talks, calling him a "spokesman" for Taylor.

Chambas is executive secretary of the west African bloc mediating the negotiations, which are playing out in the neighboring West African nation of Ghana.

Leading African nations, the US, the UN and the EU are all supporting the talks, designed to end a three-year insurgency that this month saw Liberia's capital, Monrovia, under siege by rebels.

The insurgents said they were pulling out of the talks after a broadcast interview in which Chambas, the rebels claimed, waffled on holding Taylor to his promise to cede power under a June 17 cease-fire accord.

Chambas characterized Taylor's exclusion from a future transitional government under the accord as only a "subject of future debate," the rebels said in a statement.

The rebels insisted that Taylor's exclusion from a transitional government was a "material condition" of the peace pact.

Calling Taylor's removal from power a "key demand," LURD said, "we have taken a decision to stay away from all proceedings of the ongoing discussions until we can get a satisfactory assurance that no attempt will be made to circumvent the signed cease-fire agreement."

The June 17 accord called for talks on topics including "a transitional government, which will not include the current president."

While Liberia's government signed the accord, Taylor announced last week that talk of his ceding power was a proposal only -- and one he had no intention of carrying out.

Renouncing that part of the accord, Taylor said Friday he would stay in office until his term ends in January, and would yield power then only to a government led by his vice president, Moses Blah.

While rebels rejected any possibility of Taylor remaining in power beyond mid-July, they had continued with the peace talks in Ghana's capital, Accra -- until Monday's announcement.

Chambas did not say if he would accede to rebel demands he leave the conference table. He urged all parties to continue with the talks and work toward peace in war-ruined Liberia.

"It is for all of us, our duty to cooperate with each other in the true spirit of the negotiations," Chambas told reporters.

"I urge them to return to the peace talks because the only option is to stay," Chambas said.

LURD surrounded the Liberian capital in early June as the talks got under way.

Fighting then saw the rebels press into the western outskirts of the city, killing at least 300 people by government count and uprooting tens of thousands of civilians within the capital.

Taylor's government later said it pushed the rebels back. Since the cease-fire signing, no fighting has been reported around Monrovia itself, although rebels have repeatedly accused the government of cease-fire violations throughout the country.
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