Bush Says Taylor Must First Go

The United States has agreed in principle to send troops to the conflict-ridden West African nation of Liberia, but it wants warlord President Charles Taylor to step down first, U.S. officials said Thursday.

In an interview with African journalists, President Bush stopped short of making Taylor’s departure a precondition for the deployment of U.S. forces. But privately, administration officials said the United States would otherwise balk at sending peacekeepers.

“There’s no question: Step one of any effective policy, whether we are involved or not, is for Charles Taylor to leave,” Bush said.

Bush insisted that he had not made a final decision on whether or how to intervene in Liberia, which was founded in the 19th century by freed American slaves.

“I recognize the United States has ... a unique history with Liberia. And, therefore, it’s created a certain sense of expectations,” Bush said. “But I also want to make sure that there are certain expectations met as well. And one expectation is Mr. Taylor has got to leave. And that message is clear. And I can’t make it any more clear.”

Orders to plan a possible operation have already been sent to U.S. forces in Europe, and commanders have responded with recommendations for a force of 500 to 2,000 highly mobile troops to lead a largely African intervention force, military officials said.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spent part of Thursday studying the recommendations with their staffs.

“It’s being reviewed on this side of the river,” a Pentagon official said.

It is not clear how soon the Pentagon recommendations might be passed on to the president for authorization. Bush leaves Monday for a five-day tour of Africa, and White House officials would prefer that the question of a Liberian deployment be decided before he leaves so it doesn’t overshadow his trip agenda.

The Pentagon wants to avoid a repetition of the 1993 Somalia experience, when U.S. forces intervened for humanitarian reasons but found themselves playing cat and mouse with deposed leader Mohammed Farah Aidid, who remained in Somalia and tried to reconstitute his forces.

“The Pentagon does not want Taylor in the country, or you have a situation like Somalia where U.S. troops will be trying to hunt him down,” said a United Nations source. “That’s the nightmare scenario for the Pentagon.”

Bush plans to visit Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Uganda and Nigeria next week to promote his economic development and AIDS initiatives for the continent.

U.S. officials said the deployment decision rests on the outcome of diplomatic negotiations led by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who has urged Taylor to step down. The Economic Community of West African States, which is expected to supply the bulk of the intervention force, also met Thursday to discuss options.

The talks are complicated by war crime indictments recently brought against Taylor for his alleged role in fomenting the civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone. Taylor has said he won’t step down without a guarantee of immunity from prosecution.

Briefing reporters in advance of Bush’s Africa trip, national security advisor Condoleezza Rice declined to say whether an offer of immunity might be made to Taylor.

“There is broad agreement that he has done nothing to help his people and he’s done a lot to hurt his people and to hurt the region. So let’s see how it comes out,” Rice said. “There are, very obviously, sensitive discussions going on right now, and I don’t want to get into details of them.”

The war crime indictments were brought while Taylor was on a trip to Ghana last month, but Ghanaian officials said they did not receive the arrest order in time to apprehend Taylor before he left the country.

Susan Rice, a former assistant secretary of State for African affairs in the Clinton administration, said the indictment means Taylor has three choices: to fight to the death, to fade back into the bush and try to reconstitute his forces, or to find a place of exile where he can avoid arrest.

“The box we’re in is that nobody wants Taylor to escape justice,” she said. “But if he goes to Nigeria and escapes justice, at least he won’t be on the ground creating trouble.” Nigeria has offered Taylor haven.

Pentagon officials, in addition to being wary of parallels with Somalia, are also aware of the dangers of putting further strains on U.S. forces at a time when the military already has large troop commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. An initial deployment of troops to Liberia would be small enough that it would not be expected to overtax U.S. forces. But a larger commitment later could.

While the Army has significant numbers of troops stationed with equipment in Europe, from where they could move into Liberia relatively quickly, most of those forces are heavy armored contingents that would not be suitable for a deployment to Liberia, defense officials said. Instead, the Pentagon would more likely send troops from the U.S., probably from the Army’s 82nd Airborne or 101st Airborne divisions.

Other options include sending a combination of 500 to 1,000 troops and civilians to handle logistics for an international peacekeeping force, supply it with communications equipment, help nongovernmental organizations in Liberia and further evaluate the situation there, defense officials said.

Several dozen U.S. Marines have been on standby since late last week at a Spanish military base in case they are needed to evacuate Americans or guard the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia, the Liberian capital. Those troops are distinct from any being considered as part of a peacekeeping force.

“We have to have a good idea, well beaten out at the political tables, as to what it is that we want there and how long do we plan to stay,” said retired U.S. Army Gen. Edward Atkeson, who served as deputy chief of staff for intelligence for the Army’s commands in Europe. “It’s a high-risk operation for the president to take on.”

Bush promised to make Africa a foreign policy priority when he took office, and his trip there has long been planned. The choice of countries was picked to highlight those that have made economic and political strides in recent years.

The trip also spotlights Bush’s two main initiatives for the continent: the Millennium Challenge Accounts, which reward developing countries that make progress fighting corruption and observing human rights, and his global AIDS initiative, which seeks to halt the spread of the disease in Africa and improve treatment of it.

Bush opens the trip Tuesday in Senegal, where he will speak on race and slavery during a visit to Goree Island, a transshipment point in the slave trade.