09/06/2003

Liberian rebels request peace mediator, three missing Europeans found safe

MONROVIA, June 9 (AFP) - Liberian rebel fighters who have advanced to the suburbs of the capital Monrovia have asked the Italian Catholic community of Sant'Egidio to mediate in their war with President Charles Taylor, the community revealed late on Sunday.

The news came shortly after the Swiss government announced that two Swiss nationals and a Briton who had been reported missing in Liberia following fighting near Monrovia between the rebels and the army had been found safe and sound.

The rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) has been fighting Taylor since 1999 and now controls much of the west African country. Taylor was a leading warlord in an earlier seven-year civil war that ended in 1997 and later became president.

Sant'Egidio sent AFP a statement signed by LURD chief Sekou Damate Conneh that read: "The LURD requests the good offices of the community for the national reconciliation process in Liberia."

The statement said Sant'Egidio had already presided over two days of talks between the rebels and the government that had led the LURD on Sunday to declare a halt to its advance on Monrovia "on humanitarian grounds".

The Sant'Egidio community -- nicknamed the "United Nations of Trastevere" after the district of Rome where it was founded in 1968 -- is present in numerous conflict zones and played a key role in engineering a peace deal in 1992 to end Mozambique's long-running civil war.

Meanwhile the Swiss foreign ministry said a Briton and two Swiss nationals -- the honorary consul Juerg Landolt, who is also head of a brewery in Monrovia, and a diplomatic aide -- had been found near the European Union mission in Monrovia.

The three and a German national had been missing since Saturday, following fighting five kilometres (three miles) from the centre of Monrovia between the LURD and the army.

"They are free and safe and sound," ministry spokeswoman Muriel Berset Kohen told AFP in Bern late on Sunday, adding that the three were with a Liberian woman and her two children.

"All of them are currently north of Monrovia, a few kilometres away from the European Union mission, which they have been unable to reach due to shooting," she said. A convoy was to be sent Monday to pick them up.

She was unable to say what had happened to the three and had no information about the missing German.

On Sunday the LURD halted its advance on the city centre and gave Taylor three days to step down.

The EU has ordered all its citizens in Liberia to prepare for possible evacuation. Over 100 had gathered at the EU's office in Monrovia by Sunday afternoon, along with 30 United Nations employees.

The rebel offensive on Monrovia had caused thousands of civilians to flee their homes. Many converged on a giant stadium in the capital, where the government had said they could seek shelter.

Conditions inside the stadium, one of the largest complexes in Monrovia, were appalling.

Fresh fighting was reported from several areas on Sunday afternoon, all less than 10 kilometres from the city centre.

Earlier in the day, the LURD announced it was halting its advance and ordered Taylor to leave power.

"LURD strongly instructs Charles Taylor to step down from the Liberian presidency within the next 72 hours to avoid bloodshed in Monrovia," it said in a statement.

"LURD does not recognise Taylor as president of Liberia but a wanted international criminal," the rebel movement said.

Taylor was indicted for war crimes last Wednesday by a United Nations-backed tribunal in Sierra Leone, Liberia's neighbor to the north.

The court charged him with crimes committed in Sierra Leone's brutal 11-year civil war, in which some 250,000 people died and several thousands had their limbs amputated.

The almost uninterrupted civil war in Liberia has left an estimated 200,000 people dead since the early 1990s.