The first of some 40,000 Liberian refugees are being repatriated from Ivory Coast. Hundreds of Liberian refugees have been cramming onto ramshackle buses in the southern town of Tabou in a desperate bid to go home, says the BBC's Tom McKinley.

A three-day consultative meeting that brought together Liberia's 18 registered political and other pro-democracy groups have recommended, among other things, that in the absence of a national census a thorough voters registration be conducted in the presence of political party representatives.

Poverty and war have driven more than half of Liberia's 1,628,726 children, between the ages of 3-18, out of school, according to records at the ministry of education. Liberia, with its vast resources of diamond, timber, iron ore and gold, could be one of Africa's richest nations, with the best system of education. But the brutal 1989-1997 war and the current insurgency, which erupted three years ago, have obliterated all hopes.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Monday that ongoing tensions in Liberia and the emergence of a new conflict in Cote d'Ivoire continued to pose threats to peace and security in the sub-region.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has launched a program to relocate the parents and relatives of several unaccompanied children of Liberian origin.

Presidential and legislative elections are to take place on 14 October in Liberia, the chairman of the Liberian electoral commission, Paul Guah, announced on Thursday. Guah said voter registration would be held from 15 to 29 April and the final list of candidates would be published on 20 June, news organisations reported.

A reporter of Monrovia's independent Inquirer newspaper, Throble Suah, was allegedly flogged by five uniformed security personnel, reports the paper.

Like the 1997 elections, the 2003 elections in Liberia in which Charles Taylor will serve as either a "candidate or the presiding authority" will be another false start, says Dr. Amos Sawyer. He noted that Mr. Taylor would not help in creating the enabling environment needed for free and fair elections in 2003. The Former Interim President of Liberia (1990 - 1994) was speaking at the Forum entitled "Liberia - Eye of the Hurricane" hosted by the United States Institute of Peace.

The fate of hundreds of Liberian refugees who had qualified to resettle in the United States and elsewhere remains uncertain. This is due to hostilities in the Ivory Coast where they had been interviewed under the United Nations High Commission for Refugees(UNHCR) Resettlement Program.

Liberian authorities released journalist Hassan Bility, whom authorities had held incommunicado since June 24 as a "prisoner of war." According to news reports, Bility, editor of the independent weekly The Analyst, was released without being charged or tried. He left the country for an undisclosed location.

A local child rights advocacy group has requested the Ministries of National Defence and Justice to investigate reports of child conscription into militia units in the country.

The return of exiled Liberian opposition leader Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf to the capital, Monrovia, last week was a first step of a likely challenge to President Charles Taylor in the 2003 elections, diplomatic sources in Monrovia told IRIN.

The United Nations Security Council has extended its arms embargo on Liberia for another six months, after accusing the government of continuing to import weapons. The ban includes the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd).

The United Nations Security Council should extend the arms embargo on Liberia to all rebel groups, and closely monitor the compliance of the Guinean government with that embargo, Human Rights Watch says. In a new report, "Liberian Refugees in Guinea: Refoulement, Militarization of Camps, and Other Protection Concerns", Human Rights Watch said the Guinean government's close relationship with Liberian rebel groups is posing a serious threat to refugees' security and protection in Guinea.

The Liberian rainforest is threatened by destructive logging operations, according to the first Liberian nongovernmental report on the forest industry released by La Fondation pour la Sauvegarde de l’Avenir (SAMFU)in September. This Liberian nongovernmental organisation was founded in 1987, but remained dormant during most of the 1990s because of the civil war in Liberia.

Bendu Kiadii, 38, fled fighting in western Liberia in April, along with her family. After they had trekked through bush for days, her husband Momoh contracted cholera and died, leaving her to continue eastwards with their eight children aged three to 15 years. "We lived in the bushes for many days. Eventually I arrived at the Wilson camp for the displaced, and have since stayed with my sister and her four children," she told IRIN.

Liberian opposition parties are proposing to unite and field a single candidate against the incumbent, Charles Taylor, in presidential elections in 2003, news organisations reported on Tuesday. "We want to become one single party ... and elect a new leader," the BBC quoted Chea Cheapo, co-ordinator of the Committee for the Merger of Liberian Political Parties, as saying.

UNHCR has resumed the relocation of Liberian refugees in Guinea from a transit centre near Gueckedou, near the border with Liberia, to locations farther inland. The insecurity in Liberia, plagued by fighting between rebels and government forces since 1999, has prompted nearly 40,000 Liberians to flee to Guinea, 50,000 to Sierra Leone and 17,000 to Cote d'Ivoire.

The distribution of agricultural and health packages has started in Liberia in six camps for internally displaced persons (IDP) under a grant of US $105,000 provided by the German government and managed by World Vision's Liberia office, the organisation said on Tuesday.

A panel of UN experts has accused the government of Liberian President Charles Taylor of violating an arms embargo imposed on the west African nation more than two years ago, the UN information agency IRIN said Thursday. The country received an air delivery of "six cargo aircraft in June, July and August 2002 containing weapons and ammunition supplies totalling over 200 tons", the experts said in the report, delivered to the UN Security Council on October 24.