African leaders tell Liberia to shun violence

MONROVIA - African leaders appealed to the people of Liberia to stay peaceful and shun violence in a dispute over a presidential run-off in which Harvard-trained economist Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf finished first.

The 67-year-old former finance minister is poised to become Africa's first elected female head of state after official voting returns showed her obtaining an unbeatable lead over millionaire soccer star George Weah in a poll last week.

But former AC Milan striker Weah, 39, whose supporters stoned police in Monrovia on the weekend, is calling for a rerun. He says the run-off vote was riddled with fraud.

African heads of state meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, praised what they called Tuesday's "peaceful, transparent, free and fair" presidential elections in Liberia, the first since the end of a brutal civil war that devastated the West African state.

"They called upon all Liberians to jealously guard the prevailing peace and to desist from any acts that are likely to return their country to crisis," said the statement.

It was made by Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, South African President Thabo Mbeki, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, Ghanaian President John Kufuor and other African leaders.

Earlier in Monrovia, Protestant and Catholic pastors and priests also urged Liberians to avoid the kind of political violence that turned into an orgy of killing during the civil war that ended two years ago.

"Liberia is at a critical stage. We call on all voters, in the name of peace, to allow peace to prevail," Pentecostalist Bishop Isaac Winker told worshippers at his Monrovia church.

Weah's party has filed official complaints of fraud to the Supreme Court and to electoral authorities, which say they are investigating.

The African heads of state "urged all Liberians... to use constitutional and legal means to redress any grievances arising from the elections".

Blue-bereted UN troops with armoured vehicles guarded the National Elections Commission (NEC) headquarters where Weah supporters clashed with police on Friday.

But the streets of Monrovia were quiet today and church-goers, including Johnson-Sirleaf, went to mass.

"I pray for our country Liberia," she told reporters.

Calling the run-off results "irreversible", she has offered Weah a post in government and vowed to rebuild Liberia and heal the wounds of a war that killed a quarter of a million people.

The NEC has not yet formally declared her the winner of Tuesday's poll.

But it has issued results showing that with 99.3 per cent of votes counted, Johnson-Sirleaf has gained 59.6 per cent, against Weah's just over 40 per cent.

NEC chief Frances Johnson-Morris said final results would be announced later this week, but after Tuesday.

From more than 3000 polling stations, the NEC has quarantined two ballot boxes after irregularities were found.

Liberians hope the election will close the page on their country's bloody past, in which fighting between warlords leading drug-crazed child soldiers forced thousands to flee.

"We are all tired of war. We want George Weah to accept the result. In every competition, there is a winner and a loser, and we think that as a good citizen, he should accept the result for the sake of peace," said one church-goer, Rebecca Thompson, 32.

A Weah spokesman, Eugene Nangbe, said his supporters would hold a rally in Monrovia tomorrow but they would be told to remain peaceful.

The 15,000-strong UN mission in Liberia has said it will deal firmly with any attempts to disturb the peace.

- REUTERS