10/06/2003

Liberian Rebels Ask Italy's Sant'Egidio to Mediate in Conflict

ROME -- 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,AFP reported. Sant'Egidio sent AFP a statement signed by the head of the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), 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 zone and played a key role in engineering a peace deal in 1992 to end Mozambique's long-running civil war.