New Liberian leader calls for Taylor to stand trial

By Irwin Arieff

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Liberia has formally asked
Nigeria to extradite former president Charles Taylor so he can
stand trial on war crimes charges, the country’s newly elected
leader said on Friday.

“It is time to bring the Taylor issue to closure,” Liberian
President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf told the U.N. Security Council.

Johnson-Sirleaf, who took office as Africa’s first elected
woman president in January, said she had asked Nigerian
President Olusegun Obasanjo to consult with neighboring
countries and the international community to resolve the issue
“in conformity with the requirements of the United Nations and
the international community.”

Taylor agreed to step down and flee to Nigeria in 2003 as
part of a peace deal ending 14 years of on-and-off civil war
that left the west African nation in ruins. He was later
indicted for war crimes by a U.N.-backed tribunal in
neighboring Sierra Leone.

Obasanjo was consulting with the African Union and the
Economic Community of West African States on how to respond to
the request, Obasanjo’s office said in a statement.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has also been informed,
the statement added.

Johnson-Sirleaf has faced growing international pressure to
bring to justice the man many Liberians blame for fueling a
civil war that cost a quarter of a million lives and spilled
over into neighboring states, threatening regional stability.

But the case poses a problem for Johnson-Sirleaf because
the former warlord still has supporters at home and his ex-wife
Jewel is a senator in Liberia’s Congress.

Taylor’s supporters firmly oppose extradition, and some
Liberians have expressed fears the move could reopen the
political and psychological wounds of war. U.N. peacekeeping
forces in Liberia are under orders to detain Taylor and send
him for trial to the special court in Sierra Leone.

“If he comes here, I will fight (against extradition),”
said William Teah, an ex-fighter from Taylor’s former rebel
movement. “Some of us still have weapons in this country.”

But Prince Johnson, a former rebel warlord who initially
supported Taylor but then broke with him, welcomed the
extradition request. Johnson was recently elected a senator in
the Liberian Congress.

Taylor’s spokesman in Nigeria, Sylvester Paasewe, accused
the United States of being behind what he called the “indecent
proposal.”

“African leaders know that the whole matter is an outlay of
U.S. foreign policy which is hinged on preemptive diplomacy
which often carries with it the bane of regime change,” he told
Reuters by telephone from the southeastern city of Calabar.

Richard Dicker of New York-based Human Rights Watch called
on the Security Council to deliver a message to Obasanjo that
it supports Sirleaf-Johnson’s request.

Council members that expressed support for the request were
the United States, Tanzania, Denmark, Slovakia, Britain,
France, Greece, and Argentina.

(Additional reporting by Tom Ashby and Estelle Shirbon in
Lagos, Alphonso Toweh in Monrovia and Pascal Fletcher in Dakar)