Liberia factions meet to pick interim leader

ACCRA - Liberia's warring factions sat down together on Wednesday to choose the leader of a two-year transition government meant to end 14 years of bloodshed and prepare for elections.

West African mediators desperate to end a crisis that has poisoned their region said they had told delegates there was no time to go back to the bush to consult comrades and they should appoint someone soon to replace President Moses Blah in October.

Negotiators broke off for a few hours to contact fighters in the field and planned to reconvene later in the evening.

The mediators aim to pick up Blah on Thursday and then take him on a regional tour to try to seal the peace process, going first to countries accused of backing the rebels -- Ivory Coast, Guinea and Sierra Leone -- then to regional power Nigeria.

Blah took over when former leader Charles Taylor flew into exile last week. Government and rebel delegates must choose from three figures shortlisted by political parties and other groups.

"We don't have any problems with the names," said Model rebel faction leader Thomas Nimley. "That is the process we agreed to."

Earlier the meeting was held up by former Vice-President Harry Moniba, who said he had not made the shortlist due to voting irregularities. But mediators rejected his complaint.

The final choice is between former UN official and open Taylor opponent Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Rudolph Sherman who heads a coalition regarded as broadly sympathetic to Taylor, and Monrovia businessman Gyude Bryant of the Liberia Action Party.

Taylor's departure paved the way for rebels of Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) to hand over control of parts of Liberia's capital Monrovia to a regional peacekeeping force backed by US Marines and aircraft.

But with some armed rebels still around, security is still a huge concern to aid agencies desperately trying to get emergency supplies in through the devastated port to help hundreds of thousands of people left destitute by the war.

"Nothing is finished here," UN envoy Jacques Paul Klein told Reuters. "I think we are just actually getting started. No one has been demobilised yet, nobody has been demilitarised."

Klein reckons 15,000 peacekeepers would be needed to ensure a proper end to Liberia's crisis -- 10 times as many as are currently on the ground. West African countries have pledged more than 3,000 troops, though most are still to come.

Government and rebel officials said their forces had clashed on Monday and Tuesday in central Liberia, but the skirmishes did not seem to pose a serious threat to the peace deal.

The new government will share power between political parties, the outgoing administration and the two rebel groups who control more than two-thirds of Liberia.

Hundreds of thousands of people were forced from their homes and 2000 killed in the most recent spell of blood-letting to seize a country where a civil war killed 200,000 in the 1990s.

Taylor emerged as the strongest warlord from that fighting and was elected president in 1997. But his civil war foes soon took up arms against him.

- REUTERS