Bush Sends U.S. Ships to Coast of Liberia, Vows to Limit Any Role

President Bush ordered U.S. forces to take up positions off the coast of Liberia on Friday, but he said any possible U.S. intervention in the war-ridden African nation would be “limited in time and scope.”

The action came on one of the bloodiest days in weeks of fighting in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital. Mortar attacks between rebels and government forces left about two dozen people dead and 200 wounded, according to aid groups and news reports.

Three ships carrying 2,300 Marines and 2,000 sailors have been heading toward the western Mediterranean since last weekend for possible deployment to Liberia.

The president’s new orders will move them all the way to the Liberian coast; Pentagon officials said they would arrive in seven to 10 days.

Bush and other administration officials made it clear that the U.S. did not intend to put troops on the ground in Liberia, at least not soon. Instead, an intervention ground force would consist of troops from member nations in the Economic Community of West African States whose main goal would be to stabilize the situation so humanitarian aid could resume. The U.S. role would focus on providing transport, communications and other logistics.

The United States would participate in cooperation with the United Nations, Bush said.

“We’re working very closely with the United Nations,” he said in the White House Rose Garden after meeting with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas. “They will be responsible for developing a political solution, and they will be responsible for relieving the U.S. troops in short order.”

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called Bush’s announcement “a very positive development,” but he said forces must intervene as quickly as possible.

“I hope it will bring some relief to the people of Liberia,” Annan told reporters Friday. “I think what is important is to get the troops down as quickly as we can to deal with the humanitarian situation and pacify Monrovia and its environs.”

In Monrovia on Friday, Information Minister Reginald Goodridge called Bush’s announcement a “welcome development that should restore some measure of confidence, even if it is a bit late, considering how many people have died.”

The international plan calls for a two-stage intervention: a stabilization force of ECOWAS and U.S. forces followed by a U.N. peacekeeping force. The United Nations will also take on the job of political reconstruction.

On Monday, the U.N. Security Council is expected to pass a resolution authorizing U.N.-backed troops to use full force to restore order in Liberia.

Bush has indicated for weeks that he was prepared for the United States to play a military role in Liberia, but he has not made a final decision. On Capitol Hill, Congressional Black Caucus members welcomed Bush’s action as a first step but called on him to act more aggressively and send in troops immediately.

“We appreciate that the president is finally saying something ... ,” said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), “but we’re worried that it’s not enough, and it will take too much time to really do the job.”

Lamar Alexander, a Republican senator from Tennessee who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on African affairs, said the delay is not the fault of Bush.

“It’s not indecision on his part,” said Alexander, who recently discussed the Liberian situation with Bush. “It’s that we’re not going except as part of a larger contingent of Africans, and they haven’t been ready.”

Alexander said the president believed the United States had a moral duty to act in Liberia, as well as direct national interests to protect. But keeping in mind the lessons of the 1992 Somalia intervention, in which U.S. troops died, Bush is determined to act only in a way that safeguards troops while accomplishing the mission, the senator said.

“The president wants to make sure that this is limited in scope, specific in mission, limited in troops, and only as part of a larger ECOWAS force,” Alexander said in a telephone interview. The senator said he understood that the mission as Bush has described it would probably last several months, probably not longer than six.

Bush also wants to avoid “mission creep,” Alexander said.

“In Somalia the mission changed from a humanitarian mission to a peacekeeping mission, and we didn’t have the force or the political commitment for that,” the senator said. “I can tell you that if this president decides to send in any troops, it will be in adequate numbers to do the job.”

Bush’s announcement followed a meeting Thursday of U.S., U.N. and West African officials in Sierra Leone to sort out details of an initial deployment, led by a “vanguard” battalion of nearly 800 Nigerian troops now serving under U.N. auspices in Sierra Leone, according to U.S. officials. The Nigerians are expected to arrive in Liberia in seven to 10 days, the same time frame cited for the arrival of the assault ships.

The ECOWAS forces will have three immediate goals: separating the forces of President Charles Taylor and the rebels led by the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, stabilizing the situation on the ground, and creating a “permissive environment” for humanitarian organizations to return and help thousands of people displaced by the fighting.

Bush’s announcement came on a day of particularly vicious fighting in Monrovia, as mortar rounds hit schools, an emergency medical facility and other centers where refugees had sought protection. One mortar round fell in the sprawling U.S. Embassy compound, but it did not cause any injuries.

Bush repeated his call for Taylor to step down, and it was echoed by other U.S. officials.

Taylor’s exile is “an important factor in allowing Liberia to achieve a different future,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

Taylor has pledged to leave Liberia once international forces arrive and to accept exile in nearby Nigeria. He most recently told Nigeria that he would leave Aug. 2, U.S. officials said. The officials said they were skeptical that Taylor really intended to leave Liberia without guarantees that he would not face a war crimes tribunal.

U.S. officials want Taylor out of the country before international forces come in, to avoid repeating another Somalia error: having a deposed leader still operating in the country, fomenting attacks.

Two of the U.S. ships heading to Liberia -- the Iwo Jima and the Carter Hall -- were in the western Mediterranean on Friday after transiting the Suez Canal. A third, the Nashville, had yet to pass through the canal.

The Iwo Jima, Carter Hall and Nashville are staffed by a total of about 2,000 sailors and are carrying 2,300 Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

The Pentagon has been reluctant to take on a new mission in Liberia, especially with so many U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan.

*

Times staff writers Esther Schrader, Robin Wright and Richard Simon in Washington and Maggie Farley at the United Nations contributed to this report.