Combatants: Liberian businessman picked to lead transitional government [Gyude Bryant]

Associated Press | August 19, 2003

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ACCRA, Ghana (AP) -- Liberia's rebels and government picked a Monrovia businessman to lead the country's post-war transition government, and international mediators closed peace talks after 78 tumultuous days.

The chief mediator, retired Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, officially announced selection of Gyude Bryant to head the two-year power-sharing accord, and sent warring parties home to implement it.

"The first step of unifying the people starts from today,'' Abubakar said. "Do not let your people down.''

Selection of the transitional government's leaders follows Monday's signing of a peace accord, made possible by warlord-president Charles Taylor's Aug. 11 resignation and flight into exile.

Bryant, 54, pledged to work closely with the United Nations and other international agencies in the two-year transition government, meant to lead Liberia out of 14 years of bloodshed and into elections.

"I have lived there throughout all these problems, and I see myself as a healer,'' Bryant told The Associated Press early Thursday in the Ghana capital, site of 2{ months of peace talks that played out during heavy fighting.

"I will try to meet the urgent, desperate social needs of our people,'' Bryant said.

Liberia's two insurgent movements and government picked Liberian Wesley Johnson as vice chairman.

As part of Monday's peace accord, combatants agreed not to vie for the interim government's top posts themselves. They picked them instead from a list of nominees submitted by political parties and civic groups.

Combatants rejected the best-known of the three candidates for chairwoman: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who lost 1997 elections to Taylor and has lived in exile since.

The newly chosen interim government is to take power from Taylor's designated successor, former Vice President Moses Blah, in October.

The new government itself is to yield to an elected government in 2005.

Taylor, a Libyan-trained guerrilla fighter, plunged once-prosperous Liberia into bloodletting in 1989 at the head of a small insurgency.

The seven-year civil war that followed killed at least 150,000 people.

Taylor won the first post-war elections, in a campaign boosted by his charisma, his wealth from illegal trafficking, and fears that he would revive the war if he lost.

Taylor's enemies opened their own uprising in 1999. In June, they began a siege of the capital that forced Taylor out 10 weeks later, with West African leaders and the United States urging him to go.

Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.