Seven-Member Marine Team Lands in Liberia

[thedrifter]

Published Wednesday, August 6, 2003

Seven-Member Marine Team Lands in Liberia

By GLENN McKENZIE
Associated Press Writer
MONROVIA, Liberia
U.S. military helicopters shuttled a seven-member Marine team into Liberia on Wednesday, putting the first American troops on the ground in what Washington stresses will be only limited support for a West African peace force.

A few dozen excited children on Monrovia's Atlantic beaches pointed and waved as the olive-green U.S. military helicopters swept in from U.S. warships far off shore and settled onto a tarmac pad out of sight behind the U.S. Embassy's high white walls.

"We feel happy because we're tired of what is happening. We expect them to bring peace for us," said Andrew Sarte, a 32-year old refugee, and one of the few adults among the clustered children.

Within minutes, the Marines rolled out in four-wheel drives and sped away to meet with leaders of the 3-day-old West African mission at its temporary base at Liberia's main airport. There, the Marines, in green camouflage uniforms and armed with automatic rifles, entered a Liberian military installation for talks with force commander Nigerian Brig. Gen. Festus Okonkwo.

At a hangar, Americans and Nigerians sat surrounded by duffel bags and Nigerian armored personnel carriers, army trucks and fuel rigs, conferring and taking notes.

"There are certain things we cannot provide you with," one American could be heard telling his Nigerian counterparts.

Col. B.M. Monguno, a Nigerian defense attache, told reporters the Americans had come to hear from the West Africans about "our logistical needs."

President Bush said Wednesday he sent the contingent to help clear the way for humanitarian relief, adding that he still expects Liberian President Charles Taylor to leave the country.

"This is all part of doing what is necessary to help (West African troops), going in to provide the conditions necessary for humanitarian relief to arrive, whether it be by sea or by air," Bush said.

Taylor, a former warlord who is blamed in 14 years of conflict here and who has been indicted for war crimes in nearby Sierra Leone, has pledged to cede power Monday, and go into exile in Nigeria at some publicly unspecified time later - but many are skeptical he will do so.

A senior administration official said Tuesday that the cadre could grow to 20 in coming days - but cautioned it should not be seen as the vanguard of a larger U.S. force.

The United Nations, European and African countries and Liberians themselves have pressed the United States to intervene in Liberia, where two months of rebel sieges have killed well over 1,000 civilians and left the government-held center of the city desperately short of food and clean water.

Washington has said repeatedly it will play only a limited role. The United States oversaw Liberia's 19th-century founding by freed American slaves, and Liberia remained one of the United States' leading trade and strategic partners in Africa up to the end of the Cold War.

The small deployment Wednesday stirred little notice in a capital preoccupied with the search for food.

Markets in government-held Monrovia held only potato greens and chili peppers. Rice, the key staple, was nowhere to be seen.

Across the bridges marking Monrovia's front lines, thousands of civilians poured out of the rebel-held port carrying bags of rice on their heads.

They said rebels were doling out the food free of charge from shipping containers requisitioned by the renegade force.

"They gave me two persons' share because I helped them carry," said Prince Maxwell, a 22-year-old university student.

Volunteer doctors were treating wounded rebel soldiers and civilian sick at a makeshift clinic set up in the cargo bay of the city's Club beer factor, near the port.

Doctors said they had almost no antibiotics, painkillers or even bandages and sutures.

"We want the government side to allow us medicine because our wounds are dangerous," said Hassan Konneh, a 28-year-old rebel soldier who groaned from the pain of a bullet wound to his leg.

West African military and civilian officials and U.S. Ambassador John Blaney have tried to persuade the rebels to open access to the port and its commercial and aid warehouses.

Rebel officers have set different conditions - some saying they will yield the port when peacekeepers come there, others saying President Taylor must cede power and leave Liberia before they will go.

Nigerian commanders said initially Wednesday they would deploy to the port later in the day, but the move was postponed to Thursday to allow the force at the airport outside the city to build in strength.

Okonkwo, the force commander, said the force on the ground had built to 500 Nigerian soldiers and five armored personnel carriers.

West African leaders have promised a total of 3,250-strong force from at least six African countries.

Taylor's government said over the weekend that he will leave only when enough peace troops are on the ground, and when the war-crimes indictment against him is dropped.

On Wednesday, the World Court confirmed that Liberia had asked it to stop the war crimes prosecution. Officials at the World Court, the U.N.'s highest judicial body, said it would have jurisdiction only if Sierra Leone agrees.

A United Nations-Sierra Leone court accuses Taylor of crimes against humanity for backing Sierra Leone's rebels in a brutal 10-year civil war there.


http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.d.../API/308060511


Sempers,

Roger