Liberian Rebels Seize Rubber Plantation

Rebel forces seized the headquarters of the world’s largest rubber plantation on Tuesday, then gathered outside the adjoining gates of Liberia’s international airport, plantation officials said.

President Samuel K. Doe pursued a last-stand attempt at peaceful negotiations to end a six-month insurgency that has evolved into an ethnic war. He met with Christian church officials and Muslim leaders who have offered to act as intermediaries.

In Akron, Ohio, a spokesman for the Bridgestone-Firestone Inc. company that runs the 120,000-acre plantation referred to the guerrillas as “freedom fighters.” He said the company wants to keep the plantation operating--even with rebels.

Insurgents now control every major industrial concern in this West African country of 2.5 million residents, except possibly the Bong iron ore mine, cut off for days from Monrovia and believed behind rebel lines.

Plantation residents said that rebels fired mortars and automatic weapons Tuesday as dozens crossed the Farmington River--the last natural barrier before Monrovia--and moved onto the plantation.

Late Tuesday, residents of Harbel, the plantation’s company town, told the Associated Press there were reports the rebels had killed two Mandingo civilians. The report could not be independently confirmed.

Many diplomats and military observers doubt that Doe’s army, plagued by desertions, bad leadership and poor morale, remains an effective fighting force.

Rebel leader Charles M. Taylor, a dissident businessman whose forces invaded the country in December, has the support of the Gio and Mano tribes of northeastern Liberia against Doe’s Krahn tribe.

International human rights groups say government troops have killed hundreds of Gio and Mano civilians since the insurgency began in late December.

On Tuesday, rebels gathered outside Robertsfield International Airport, 25 miles from Monrovia, which was built to serve the plantation. The rebels’ presence has effectively closed the airport.

Off Monrovia, four U.S. warships carrying 2,000 Marines remained ready to evacuate Americans and other foreigners, including the 10 to 15 Soviet diplomats in Liberia, officials said.

In Washington, White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said 33 Americans were evacuated Monday while thousands had left earlier. He said 70 U.S. officials and about 1,200 private American citizens remained.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Tuesday that the ships are off Liberia “solely on a contingency basis to evacuate American citizens if it becomes necessary. . . . The U.S. military has no role to play in this conflict.”

Doe, a former army master sergeant who seized power in a 1980 coup, said last week he would not run for reelection in 1991, but he refused to resign in the face of the rebel advances.

Taylor, a former Doe associate who fled the country in 1983 to escape fraud charges, has said Doe must quit as president as a precondition for peace talks.