Liberians trickle back to damaged homes as peace talks resume

MONROVIA, Liberia -- With rebels poised to take the capital, President Charles Taylor warned on Thursday there can be no peace in the west African country unless an international tribunal drops war crimes charges against him.

His warning came as government envoys met with representatives of two rebel groups in nearby Ghana to negotiate an end to fighting that has displaced tens of thousands of people in the past week.

A joint U.N.-Sierra Leone tribunal last week accused Taylor of supporting the rebel movement behind a decade-long terror campaign in neighboring Sierra Leone.

"Peace in Liberia ... hangs upon that particular situation," Taylor said, referring to the indictment. "It has to be removed."

The rebel offensive is the most intense yet in a three-year campaign to oust Taylor, who controls little territory outside the capital.

After days of clashes on Monrovia's outskirts, the government and main rebel group have declared their intent to cease hostilities, with conditions. No new fighting has been reported since Tuesday.

In Ghana, Liberian Defense Minister Daniel Chea held his first meeting with rebel representatives Thursday, a Ghanaian foreign ministry official said on condition of anonymity.

Organizers of the talks led Liberian children into the room to plead with all sides to stop the fighting.

A cease-fire could be signed as soon as today, the official said.

Taylor told delegates at the opening of the talks last week that he would step down if he was seen as an obstacle to peace in Liberia.

But on Thursday, he ruled out any deal that would drive him from office and insisted on security guarantees for himself and his supporters.

"If there is any unceremonial departure, there will be a bloodbath here," Taylor said.

Liberians fear a bloody battle for Monrovia, a city of 1 million was repeatedly overrun during seven years of devastating factional fighting that ended in 1996. Taylor emerged the strongest warlord from that conflict and won presidential elections the following year.

Taylor's government claimed to have repelled the latest in a string of rebel pushes into the city, which is filled with refugees from the clashes.

Monrovia residents awoke Thursday to the thud of heavy rains -- but not artillery.

The more optimistic among tens of thousands of people who fled their homes during five days of fighting trickled back.

The fighting left bodies in the streets of northwestern neighborhoods, although the toll for the campaign is unknown.

In one suburb, Duala, residents stared at bullet-scarred stores and homes -- some of them completely razed -- along the district's main thoroughfare.

Marie Toe, a 32-year-old resident who fled, trudged home Thursday. "We've come to see what's left of our properties," she said.

"We only hope that a cease-fire will hold so that we don't have to run again."

Mary Weh, a 29-year-old fish dealer, also returned. "I've come to stay, because there's no place like home," she said.

Downtown, some buses and taxis returned to the streets, and roadside vendors were back at work, though often with massively inflated prices.

The humanitarian situation inside Monrovia is "dramatic" and "highly volatile," Ramin Rafirasme, a spokesman for the U.N. World Food Program, said Wednesday.

The U.N. and the International Committee of the Red Cross plan to ship food to Monrovia this week as long as fighting does not resume, he said.