Taylor’s Forces Launch Attack in Liberia

President Charles Taylor’s forces launched what they called a major counterattack 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 fight’ at the Atlantic coastal city.

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 West African nation came as rebels of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy movement continued to press their 10-day siege of the capital, Monrovia, in fighting that has killed hundreds of civilians.

Rebels also hold Monrovia’s port, cutting off warehouses filled with food from the city’s 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 in government hands.

“Buchanan was the only alternative way to ship some food into Liberia. Now – you can forget about it,” Frederic Bardou said at a feeding center in Monrovia run by Action Contre la Faim, or Action Against Hunger.

Around him at the center, emaciated babies hung from their mothers’ shoulders.

Rebels have waged a three-year campaign to oust Taylor, a former warlord blamed for 14 years of conflict in the once leading West African country.

Taylor was elected president in Liberia in 1997 after waging eight years of civil war – a conflict that spread into neighboring Sierra Leone. He has been indicted by a war crimes court in Sierra Leone for backing that country’s brutal rebels.

Monday’s attack on Buchanan marked a return to full-scale fighting by the country’s smaller rebel group, Movement for Democracy in Liberia.

Unlike the Liberians United group, the Movement for Democracy largely had heeded cease-fire 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.

“We are asking them to cease-fire immediately,” said Sunny Ugoh, spokesman of the leading West African regional bloc. “This will not be negotiable.”

West African leaders have promised a multinational peace force for Liberia since soon after rebels launched their siege of Monrovia in early June.

The United States, which oversaw Liberia’s founding by freed American slaves in the 19th century, has pledged support. But it insists Liberia’s neighbors and the United Nations must take the lead.

President Bush on Friday ordered troops to take up position off Liberia’s Atlantic coast in readiness for any peace mission.

Bush also has demanded that Taylor step down. Taylor has said he will do so, accepting an asylum offer in Nigeria, only when peacekeepers arrive.

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 and others to foot the bill.

More West African, U.N. and U.S. talks on the peace force ended Monday with no sign of progress on deployment.

West African diplomats said on condition of anonymity that no deployment date could be set until agreement was reached on support for the mission. 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 U.N. airport, at the town of Hastings, to train for the mission in 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 U.N. military spokesman in Sierra Leone, Maj. Aliyu Yusuf, said.

The U.S. 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 traveling to Guinea.