Liberian Militia Leader Enters Capital in Triumph to Join Interim Unity Council

The nation’s chief militia leader, Charles Taylor, whose forces twice fought their way to the very edge of the capital of Monrovia, made a triumphal entry into the city Thursday to join a new ruling council.

Tens of thousands of people poured into the city to greet Taylor, 47, who has not been to Monrovia since before the start of the civil war in December, 1989.

The U.S.-educated militia leader drove down from his inland stronghold of Gbarnga along a road lined by supporters waving banners proclaiming “Man of Peace.”

“What I want is peace for our people, I want democracy for our people. I hope we can use this occasion to demonstrate that we are capable of delivery,” he told the British Broadcasting Corp. from Monrovia shortly after his arrival.

After nearly six years of war and by most counts a dozen failed peace accords, Liberia’s seven factions stopped shooting last weekend and started preparing for a ceremony today that will join them in a new transitional government.

An accord signed Aug. 19 in the Nigerian capital of Abuja called for a six-member ruling council to oversee the country until elections in August, 1996. Disarmament of the estimated 60,000 rebel fighters is to begin this month.

Taylor invaded Liberia, then ruled by dictatorial President Samuel K. Doe, from neighboring Ivory Coast with a force of about 150 rebels in December, 1989. He later saw his National Patriotic Front of Liberia swell to thousands of followers in what became a bloody ethnic conflict.

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More than 150,000 people died, and half of Liberia’s prewar population of 2.5 million has been displaced by the conflict. Doe was slain by rebel forces in 1990.

West African peacekeeping troops fought off Taylor’s advances on Monrovia in 1990, and Taylor’s refusal to honor numerous regionally backed peace accords cost him support.

He almost took Monrovia in October, 1992, but was driven back by troops of the Nigerian-led West African intervention force.

Before he invaded Liberia, Taylor was a minor Liberian dissident.

Taylor, who earned a degree in economics from Bentley College outside Boston, was active in a U.S.-based Liberian student movement that was critical of Doe’s predecessor, William Tolbert.

Tolbert and his aides were killed in Doe’s 1980 coup.