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Posted on 07/10/2003 12:49:41 PM PDT by Brian S
July 10 — By Randall Mikkelsen
PRETORIA, South Africa (Reuters) - President Bush will be ready to decide within days whether to send U.S. peacekeepers to enforce a cease-fire in Liberia, Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Thursday.
"I expect that over the next several days...the president will be in a position to make a decision," Powell told reporters covering a trip by Bush to Africa.
Whatever role the United States plays will be "very limited in duration and scope," and intended to mainly ensure the arrival of West African peacekeepers under the regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), he said.
"The arrival of ECOWAS forces would have to be supported in some way by the United States...The intention right now is to lead with ECOWAS, with the United States playing a role of support," he said.
Bush has said Liberian President Charles Taylor must step aside to bring stability to the country ravaged by 14 years of civil war.
Taylor, who has accepted an asylum offer from Nigeria, told Reuters on Thursday he was ready to quit the moment peacekeepers reached his broken country.
A U.S. team in Ghana would meet through the weekend with West African military officers planning to deploy a force of 1,000 to keep a truce between Liberia's army and rebels, Powell said. Nigeria's army said it was ready to join the force.
The meeting in Ghana was intended to "assess what will be required to move the ECOWAS troops into Monrovia and to support them, and as part of that assessment what role the United States might play and ECOWAS thinks we should play," Powell said.
A U.S. military assessment team now in the Liberian capital Monrovia was almost finished with its work, Powell said.
Bush was to discuss the Liberian issue with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo when he visits him in Nigeria on Saturday, and was also to meet U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in Washington on Monday.
But with U.S. troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other trouble spots around the world, Bush faces some domestic resistance to sending troops to a new country.
A top congressional Republican has said there must be a vote before the United States commits troops to Liberia.
Desperate Liberians, meanwhile, pleaded for help as they mobbed a U.S. military survey team touring refugee camps outside Monrovia, on the path of rebel attacks into the steamy capital that left hundreds dead last month.
Powell said he had updated Annan on the Liberian situation in a telephone conversation before briefing reporters. Annan has urged the United States to lead the Liberian force. Taylor also wants an American lead.
"I'm a pan-African and I believe that this ought to be an African affair but American leadership is very, very important," Taylor said.
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