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New Liberian leader calls for Taylor to stand trial

Posted on: Friday, 17 March 2006, 12:03 CST

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)

Source: REUTERS

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