ECOWAS, Nigeria Hold Emergency Meeting on Liberia Crisis

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, June 30, 2003

ECOWAS, Nigeria Hold Emergency Meeting on Liberia Crisis

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Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Secretary General Mohammed Ibn Chambas, accompanied by Ghanaian Minister of Foreign Affairs Nana Akuffuor-Addo, held an emergency meeting with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo in his hometown Ota in the southwestern state of Ogun at the weekend, local media reported Sunday.

The meeting centered on the raging crisis in Liberia where rebel forces had engaged the government of President Charles Taylor in a bid to remove him from office.

Chambas told Obasanjo at the meeting that with the help of the international community, peace would be restored in Liberia.

Ghana hosted the ECOWAS peace meeting on Liberia, brokered by Nigeria's former president Abdulsalami Abubakar.

The peace summit opened on June 4 with representatives of the rebel groups and the Taylor-led government in attendance.

A ceasefire agreement signed by the contending parties during the meeting was violated early last week when rebels of the Liberia United for Reconciliation and Democracy moved from their position into Liberia's capital Monrovia.

The renewed fighting which erupted early this week had left some 300 people dead and over 1,000 injured.

The weekend meeting between ECOWAS and Obasanjo underscores Nigeria's importance in ensuring that peace reigned in the west African sub-region.

A team of the UN Security Council is due in Nigeria on Sunday and it is expected that Liberia would feature prominently in its discussions with the Nigerian government.

The Liberian civil war, which lasted about 15 years and claimed at least 200,000 lives, flared up again in 1998 following attacks launched by the LURD rebels in northern Liberia.

Civil war over the past decade has made Liberia among the most miserable places in the world and the latest unrest since 1998 hasforced some 300,000 Liberians to flee to neighboring countries andclaimed thousands more lives.

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