Liberia's President Agrees to Leave

Nigeria Asylum May Allow for U.S. Force

Charles Taylor did not name a departure date but said he knows President Bush feels "things need to be done quickly." (Georges Gobet - AFP)

MONROVIA, Liberia, July 6 -- President Charles Taylor of Liberia announced today that he will step down and accept an offer of asylum in Nigeria.

The announcement, issued after a meeting with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, appears to clear a major obstacle for the deployment of U.S. troops to Liberia. President Bush has repeatedly made Taylor's departure a condition for sending a U.S. peacekeeping force.

Although Taylor has previously promised to leave, his pledge today carried both a specific destination and the weight of Obasanjo, the respected leader of Africa's most populous nation. Neither leader specified a date for Taylor's departure, but both emphasized that it will be sooner rather than later.

"I think it is proper to proceed gingerly and with haste," Taylor said. "I did understand from President Bush that things need to be done quickly as there is a window of opportunity. We embrace and accept that window of opportunity, and we move hastily."

The announcement came as Bush prepared to leave for his first tour of Africa amid mounting expectations that he would dispatch the peacekeeping force to this nation, which was founded for freed American slaves. A U.S. military team was due to arrive in the capital, Monrovia, early Monday to assess the humanitarian situation in the city, where the population of 1 million has swollen as villagers streamed in last month to flee fighting associated with a rebel offensive.

But Taylor's announced exit also ignited fresh concerns about whether he will escape trial for alleged war crimes. A U.N. court indicted him last month for crimes against humanity and other violations of international law in neighboring Sierra Leone, where Taylor backed rebels notorious for severing the limbs of civilians.

Obasanjo today disparaged the U.N. indictment, calling it an obstacle to bringing a "durable peace" to Liberia, where rebel groups claim to control much of the countryside.

The Nigerian leader said the only "condition" attached to his invitation to grant Taylor safe haven "is that Nigeria and I will not be harassed by anybody, any organization or any country for making this humanitarian gesture, a gesture that is necessary to solve the conflict in this country."

Human rights advocates warned that the issue would not go away. Taylor's indictment, the second of a head of state -- Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic was the first -- was widely hailed as a blow against the culture of impunity that has made wars in Africa especially brutal, because the men waging them sense the world's indifference.

"The special court for Sierra Leone should be respected," said Peter Takirambudde, director of the Africa division of Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group based in New York. "Peace and stability should not trump justice."

Taylor and Obasanjo framed the Liberian president's departure as a conciliatory move aimed at hastening the arrival of an international force to stabilize the country while removing the president whom many consider its main source of instability.

"We invite the United States to come full force and assist this process in bringing peace back to Liberia," Taylor said after meeting for more than an hour with Obasanjo. Taylor faces a U.N. Security Council ban on overseas travel as well as possible arrest abroad on the war crimes indictment.

"We believe that it's not unreasonable to request that there be an orderly exit from power," Taylor said. "We believe it will help in the long run, the short run and the medium term."

Rights advocates say that allowing Taylor to escape trial might hasten the arrival of peacekeepers but will complicate efforts to establish a government grounded in the rule of law. "The international force must not only protect the civilian population but also respect the authority of the international court which issued the indictment," Takirambudde said.

Taylor's departure was sought by critics who describe him as the engine of discord that has enveloped the entire region. By supporting rebel groups that sought to undermine governments in neighboring countries, Taylor provoked other countries to do the same, analysts say. Of the two rebel armies now threatening his government, one is backed principally by Ivory Coast, the other by Guinea and Sierra Leone.