Liberia Rebels Retreat From Hub of Capital : Africa: City sees a lull in fighting. Insurgents trying to topple President Doe claim they are trying to spare civilian lives.

Rebels retreated to the outskirts of Monrovia on Sunday, and a spokesman said insurgents surrounding the besieged West African capital want to spare civilian lives.

President Samuel K. Doe on Friday announced a cease-fire in the six-month-old civil war, but the spokesman denied that the rebels of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, led by former Doe associate Charles Taylor, were observing the cease-fire.

“There is no agreement between us and Doe, and we have made it very, very clear that there will be no cease-fire from our side,” chief rebel spokesman Thomas Woewiyu told Reuters news agency in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. He spoke from an undisclosed location in West Africa.

There were no reports of fighting Sunday.

Soldiers, who have been on shooting and looting sprees each night since the rebels attacked the capital a week ago, said they believed the rebels had withdrawn.

It was not clear whether the rebels had retreated to regroup and await reinforcements. Infighting among the rebels was reported at the beginning of last week by residents contacted by radio behind rebel lines in northern Liberia.

Monrovians who ventured out Sunday found roads littered with bodies. One resident said he saw the bodies of 16 civilians, including two small children, near the port.

Soldiers went to the city’s main hospital to ask for 86 body bags to take to an eastern suburb where a battle raged for much of last week. Residents said they also saw soldiers bury 20 bodies on a beach near Doe’s heavily fortified seaside mansion.

“Doe is in there with a lot of civilians and is holding them hostage. . . . What we are doing is taking precautions to make sure we can bring this madman under control without unnecessary killing of civilians,” Woewiyu said.

“Every entrance and every exit to the city has been closed by us,” he said, adding that rebel forces were within two miles of Doe’s mansion.

Woewiyu said he would attend new peace talks in Freetown, Sierra Leone, mediated by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). This move suggested that the rebels’ hopes of an early surrender by Doe were fading.

The NPFL did not send delegates to last Friday’s scheduled opening session of the talks. Woewiyu said the rebel movement was annoyed by ECOWAS attempts to impose preconditions on a peace settlement.

These included blocking NPFL leader Taylor from assuming the leadership of an interim government and sending an ECOWAS multinational peacekeeping force to Liberia to prevent reprisal killings, Woewiyu said.

In the event of a rebel takeover, he added, there would be no reprisals against members of Doe’s Krahn tribe, who form the backbone of the government army, and the Mandingo trading community, closely associated with Doe’s regime.