Liberia's warring factions poised to seal peace

ACCRA - Liberia's government and rebels moved closer on Monday to signing a peace deal setting up an interim administration designed to halt a 14-year spiral of violence, officials said.

After drawn-out talks in Ghana's capital Accra, the main rebel group LURD dropped its demand on Sunday for the number two post in a government due to take power in mid-October, and reached a compromise at an overnight meeting with mediators.

"Nothing stands in the way of signing an agreement today," LURD's top negotiator Kabina Ja'neh told Reuters on Monday.

Ja'neh said mediators had agreed overnight to increase the representation in parliament of the warring factions -- the current government plus two rebel groups -- to 12 seats each, up from an initial seven but less than the 15 seats LURD wanted.

The move would increase the assembly to 76 seats, with the remainder drawn from political parties, civil society groups and representatives from Liberia's 15 counties.

Ja'neh said mediators planned to circulate a final draft agreement on Monday and sign at around 1800 GMT.

However, delays appeared likely with details still to finalise before copies of the 45-page draft could be printed up and circulated among delegates from the government, rebel groups, political parties and civil society groups.

Mediators have said members of the warring factions would not be eligible for the top four posts in the interim administration, but the rebels were trying to get the rules relaxed to allow them to nominate candidates for the top two jobs in parliament.

The interim government will replace the current administration led by new President Moses Blah, in power since warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor quit under international pressure last week and went into exile in Nigeria.

Since Taylor launched a rebellion in 1989, Liberia has seen little but violence and has been the epicentre of a regional cycle of bloodshed in which 250,000 people have been killed.

Taylor was elected president in 1997 elections called to end a bloody civil war, but it was not long before new rebel factions emerged to fight him.

More than 1000 Nigerian-led regional peacekeepers backed by US Marines are in the process of securing Liberia's shattered capital Monrovia, split in two for weeks by the fighting.

Aid organisations, some of whom lost stocks of food and other supplies in an orgy of looting in Monrovia, are trying to help hundreds of thousands of displaced people in the city.

Justin Bagirishya of the UN's World Food Programme said that of 10,000 tonnes of food aid at the port, only 4300 tonnes were left after looting by fighters and hungry crowds.

The rebels and the government agreed on Sunday to allow aid workers access to all areas and to guarantee their safety but Ross Mountain, UN special coordinator for humanitarian affairs, said security remained the prime concern.

"One is tempted to be upbeat and positive about the latest breaking developments," Mountain said. "Unfortunately, the situation on the ground is still very fragile and from this perspective there is certainly no room for complacency."

Besides Monrovia, people needed help across the country -- from the second city Buchanan, scene of fierce fighting in July, to northern Lofa County where LURD launched its rebellion in 2000, severing most foreign aid to the area, Mountain said.

- REUTERS