With fighting intensifying in Liberia, the peace conference that opened here last week has taken a pause while West African leaders seek to broker a truce between the warring parties. On Monday, Ghana's Minister of Foreign Affairs Nana Akufo-Addo and Dr. Mohamed Ibn Chambas, executive secretary of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) left Accra in search of a ceasefire. Chambas said they would stop in the Sierra Leonean capital Freetown and spend the night in Conakry, Guinea, before heading to Monrovia Tuesday.
Related Link:
* BBC Country Profile
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/country_profiles/1043500.stm
* Botched Taylor arrest embarrassing
http://www.ghanaian-chronicle.com/230606/page1.htm

UNICEF has expressed concern for children caught up in the escalation of civil war in Liberia and appealed to all warring parties to ensure that civilians, especially children, are protected from harm. "As heavy fighting forces thousands of civilians to flee the shelter of camps on the outskirts of Monrovia, we are deeply troubled about the plight of Liberian children and the civilian population caught up in the mayhem,"  said Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of UNICEF.

The government of Liberia has shut down six amateur FM radio stations operating in Bong County, central Liberia, and Margibi County, some 40 kilometres east of the capital, Monrovia. The stations affected include Y-FM, Bright FM, Jet 89.9, The Voice of Kakata and the Voice of YMCA.

Three armed men wearing uniforms of the Presidential elite guard, the Anti-Terrorist Unit (ATU), attacked Stanley McGill, a journalist working with the independent newspaper "The News" on May 27. Journalism institutions have voiced concern about the abuse of the freedom of expression rights of Liberians and the persistent threats and attacks on journalists and the private media in the country.

The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) has issued a statement in solidarity with all journalists, media practitioners and human rights advocates who have been the worst victims of the campaign of repression, predation and mayhem that have institutionalised the culture of impunity as an instrument of rule since President Charles Taylor came to power in Liberia on August 2, 1997.

Liberian rebels surged into the western outskirts of the capital Monrovia last Friday after heavy fighting overnight which sent thousands of displaced people fleeing in heavy rain into the city centre.

At least 2,000 Liberian refugees fleeing war-ravaged southeastern Maryland County arrived in Cote d'Ivoire's border town of Tabou over the weekend, exerting more strain on the town's already poor social infrastructure, aid workers said on Tuesday.

Liberian President Charles Taylor and rebels fighting his regime since 1999 will meet face to face for the first time from Wednesday in Ghana to try and end a festering war that has spread chaos in west Africa. The three-day parleys under the aegis of the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) and a United Nations-backed contact group on Liberia are being touted by the organisers as a make-or-break chance for peace.

A peace force must be deployed to Liberia before humanitarian aid can be delivered to hundreds of thousands of displaced people, a United Nations official has said. Peace talks between the government of President Charles Taylor and the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Development (Lurd) rebels are due to take place in Ghana next week.

Up to 10,000 people have escaped Liberia after the latest upsurge in fighting, the United Nations refugee agency has said. The newly-formed rebel Movement for Democracy in Liberia (Model) says it captured the south-eastern town of Harper over the weekend.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has warned that Liberia's civil war could engulf the capital Monrovia, where half a million people are already in a desperate situation, unless President Charles Taylor and rebel forces can be persuaded to negotiate an early ceasefire.

Liberia faces a humanitarian disaster, with war preventing aid workers from helping hundreds of thousands of people and threatening to further destabilise an already fragile region, the chief of the U.N. refugee agency said.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has set up the logistics to repatriate more than 900 Third Country Nationals (TCNs) who have been marooned for several weeks in and around the southeastern Liberian coastal town of Harper, in Maryland County.

The objective and responsibility of this mission is to promote and safeguard MSF's Identity and Principles and to be overall responsible by co-ordinating the appropriate, effective and efficient management of the MSF operations in-country through the CT (Coordination Team) in accordance with the MSF mandate and the MSF-CH Operational Policy.

The Interim Programme Manager's role will be to guide the Social Protection and Welfare Programme's progress through a number of tasks, whist reviewing the team's structure and performance levels, identifying any barriers to development and recommending changes to address these.

The Cote d'Ivoire army is continuing to recruit young Liberians from Guiglo refugee camp in the west of the country to fight against Ivorian rebel forces in the area, according to UN officials and Liberian residents in the camp and the commander of French peacekeeping forces in the area.

This report from the International Crisis Group unravels the involvement of many West African leaders in their region's worsening conflict. While Charles Taylor of Liberia is the key to regional instability, the conflicts in the Mano River Union (Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone) and Côte d'Ivoire are interwoven and cannot be treated separately. A comprehensive strategy is required, including a stronger U.S. role. A phased approach is needed to get a ceasefire and press Taylor to postpone elections and stand down. The Security Council should prepare a peacekeeping mission to monitor the ceasefire and help establish an interim administration, and make standby arrangements for a more robust multinational force if the ceasefire collapses. If there is no ceasefire, tougher measures should be taken, including wider sanctions and steps to bring Taylor and others before a war crimes tribunal such as Sierra Leone's Special Court.

The United Nations Security Council should maintain the arms embargo against the Liberian government and Liberian rebel factions, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to the Security Council. The Security Council will review existing sanctions on Liberia on May 7, 2003. Human Rights Watch has documented numerous human rights abuses against civilians by Liberian government and rebel groups in the past year, including summary executions, recruitment of children, sexual violence, looting of civilian property, and forced labor.

A new rebel group, Movement for Democracy in Liberia (M0DEL) has attacked the strategic southeast Liberian coastal town of Greenville, while an older rebel group hit Tappita in the northeastern county of Nimba.

Thousands of people in Liberia's coastal city of Greenville have fled the town in fear of rebel attacks, civilians in Monrovia have said, reports Deutsche Presse-Agentur. Many had reportedly fled into jungles after hearing that an unknown rebel group calling itself Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) had advanced to nearby Sinoe County.