Shooting mars UN peacekeeping debut in Liberia

MONROVIA - A gunfight broke out between rebels and loyalist forces in Liberia's capital on Wednesday, leaving three civilians dead just hours after the United Nations took command of West African peacekeepers.

The worst violence in Monrovia since ex-President Charles Taylor left in August, potentially opening the way for an end to a long civil war, marred the debut of a force that is set to become the world's biggest UN peacekeeping mission.

Liberians blamed the peacekeepers for letting rebel leader Sekou Conneh bring armed bodyguards into the city on his first visit since a peace deal meant to end nearly 14 years of strife.

"The UN is responsible for this, they want us to die," chanted crowds around the bodies of the three dead civilians as peacekeepers told gun-wielding rebels to clear the area.

Two of the victims had been shot. One was stabbed through the heart with a bayonet.

The trouble began with people throwing stones at Conneh's motorcade as it drove through the Paynesville suburb to meet caretaker President Moses Blah. Shots were then fired -- it was not clear from which side -- triggering a 20-minute gunbattle.

Conneh's car sped away and rebels said he returned to the stronghold of Tubmanburg, 60km north of Monrovia, without meeting Blah.

"I am very disappointed, I feel terrible," said Edwin Snowe, a government mediator who organised the meeting. "It was my hope that the UN forces would have taken over the security."

Festus Okonkwo, the commander of the peacekeepers in Monrovia, told reporters the rebels had been told to leave their weapons behind but some managed to bypass his force's checkpoints and slip their guns through.

At full strength the UNMIL force will have 15,000 troops, 1115 police, 250 military observers and 160 staff officers -- the largest UN deployment since one that helped bring an end early last year to a related war in neighbouring Sierra Leone.

West African nations have already sent 3500 troops to Liberia, which has been given fresh hope by the peace deal signed between rebels and the government in August after Taylor flew into exile.

At a ceremony on Wednesday, West African soldiers of the Ecomil mission swapped their hats for UN blue berets to mark the transfer between the two forces in what the United Nations called "a symbolic rehatting".

Jacques Paul Klein, the UN top man in Liberia, said he had drawn up a US$280 million ($476.35 million) plan to put the country back on its feet. "I like challenges, otherwise life would be dull," he told reporters at the ceremony.

The transfer came as the last US warship sailed away from Liberia's coast, wrapping up Washington's low-key involvement in a country founded by freed American slaves.

The United Nations hopes the force in Liberia will replicate the success of the UNAMSIL peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone, which disarmed 47,000 rebel and government fighters and helped draw a line under that country's decade-long war.

On Tuesday, it appointed Kenya's Daniel Opande, who headed UNAMSIL, as commander of the Liberia force, which is expected to reach full strength in four to six months.

The Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Africa, Namibia and Ethiopia have all offered troops. Ireland has offered a headquarters company and Russia may send 1200 soldiers.

Liberia's strife began when Taylor launched a seven-year civil war in 1989 in which 200,000 people died. He was elected president in 1997 but his old foes soon took up arms again and now hold over three quarters of the country.

- REUTERS