U.S. Is Ready to Intervene in Liberia

After talks with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday, President Bush said for the first time that the U.S. is prepared to send troops to Liberia to help cement a cease-fire, end 14 years of war and foster a political transition.

“I think everybody understands any commitment we have would be limited in size and limited in tenure,” Bush told reporters during a joint photo opportunity with Annan.

The terms of U.S. involvement would depend on reports from two American assessment teams now in West Africa, he said.

One team is in Ghana conferring with ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States, “to determine what is necessary, from our side, to fulfill the commitment I have made that we will help maintain this cease-fire,” Bush said.

The other team is in Liberia assessing the humanitarian crisis.

The president said he hoped for feedback from the teams “as soon as possible.” Both are in the process of “wrapping up” their work, according to a State Department official.

“We want to help ECOWAS,” Bush said. “It may require troops but we don’t know how many yet. And therefore it’s hard for me to make a determination until I’ve seen all the facts.”

Any final decision would be contingent on Liberian President Charles Taylor departing the country.

“This is conditional on President Taylor leaving. He’s got to leave,” Bush said.

As diplomatic discussions continued, Liberian government troops and rebels accused each other of violating the June 17 cease-fire. Liberian Defense Minister Daniel Chea alleged that rebels had attacked three times in the past few days.

“They want to draw us into fighting, but we will not allow ourselves to be drawn in,” Chea told Reuters news service.

The smaller of two rebel groups charged that Liberian forces initiated trouble by attacking them first.

The White House has delayed the anticipated troop commitment as the U.S. negotiates terms for 500 to 1,000 American personnel to enter and depart Liberia, American officials said.

During daylong talks in Washington, at the State Department and on Capitol Hill, Annan outlined a phased process for the transition of power in Liberia. It would begin with the deployment of a “vanguard” of between 1,000 and 1,500 ECOWAS troops.

Taylor would then leave Liberia, probably for exile in Nigeria, and additional troops would arrive from West Africa and possibly the United States, Annan told reporters.

Next, U.N. peacekeepers would be deployed to stabilize the cease-fire, as the United Nations has done in neighboring Sierra Leone.

“Once the situation is calmer and stabilized, the U.S. would leave and the U.N. peacekeepers would carry on the situation,” Annan said.

Bush, for his part, said he and the U.N. secretary-general had a “meeting of the minds” on Liberia.

Also present at the talks was Jacques Paul Klein, an American who has been named the new U.N. envoy to Liberia.

Klein said the international community must at least try to stabilize Liberia. The fighting there has spilled over to neighboring Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Guinea.

In preparation for a final decision, the Pentagon has dispatched about 100 troops and four small aircraft in the event that the assessment team in Liberia has to be evacuated.

The meeting between Bush and Annan, a Ghanaian, was the first since December, before a divisive debate at the Security Council over threatened U.S. military action in Iraq.