American troops to Africa?

[Guest Guest]

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer...p=1012571727162

 

Bush pressed to send troops to LiberiaBy James Harding in Washington and David White in LondonPublished: July 1 2003

 

President George W. Bush on Tuesday met his top defence and national security officials to consider US involvement in Liberia, as Washington came under growing pressure to intervene to enforce peace.

 

The US administration, haunted by the fiasco of US intervention in Somalia a decade ago and stretched by the deployment of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, is reluctant to put boots on the ground in Liberia.

 

But Mr Bush, who last week called on Liberian president Charles Taylor to stand down, is being pressed to commit US forces on the eve of his first visit to Africa.

 

Fighting between forces loyal to Mr Taylor and rebels seeking to overthrow him have killed hundreds of civilians trapped in the capital, Monrovia, over the last month.

 

Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary-general, on Tuesday repeated his call for urgent military intervention. "Of course it is a decision for the United States to take, but many expect the US to lead that operation," Mr Annan said in Switzerland. Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, was said to have discussed Liberia with Mr Annan in a conversation on Tuesday.

 

Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, said the administration was "actively discussing" possible US involvement. But he said the administration saw encouraging signs on the ground in the Liberian capital. "The situation in Monrovia is quiet for now. Most of the insurgents appear to have withdrawn their previous positions."

 

Liberians, whose state was formed by freed American slaves and who think of themselves as having a special bond with the US, dumped corpses outside the US embassy in Monrovia as they called on the Bush administration to come to their aid.

 

A special envoy of Mr Taylor on Tuesday joined calls for US participation in a peace force and appealed for time to prepare an "orderly exit" from power.

 

Samuel Jackson, an economic aide and negotiator at the stalled Liberia peace talks in Ghana, said details of a political transition needed to be worked out, including a review of war crimes charges made against Mr Taylor by a UN-backed court for his part in the civil war in Sierra Leone.

 

"There can be no peace in Liberia without clarification of those charges," he said. "The case against President Taylor is weak and clearly politically motivated."

 

A ceasefire agreement on June 17 between the government and rebel movements collapsed when Mr Taylor said he would not stand down until his term ended in January. Mr Jackson told a meeting at London's Royal Institute of International Affairs a peace agreement had to be based on avoiding recrimination or retribution.

 

He hinted Mr Taylor might agree not to stand again for president as part of an overall package.

 

"We must begin now to write a post-Taylor script in Liberia," he said, calling for "a national reconciliation based on putting the past behind us".

 

He urged the US, European Union and UN to provide personnel and equipment to support a peace force in which west African countries would play the leading role, but which must agree to exclude powers to arrest Mr Taylor.

 

But the US rebuffed the demands. Richard Boucher, State Department spokesman, said the charges by the court should stand and that Mr Taylor did not have "any place in a future government of Liberia".

 

[Guest Guest]

I'm confused...first the world wants us to mind our own business...then it wants us to "butt" in????

[Guest Guest]

You've got it happygirl.

 

We are apart of this world and have to live in it, but where does it state that we have to be policemen to the world. Especially when all we get are compalains and are expected to carry the major cost.

 

The UN is setting it’s self up as the final word as a world government, NO THANK YOU. Stay out of my country, and it’s Constitution thank you very much.

 

[Dee]

We are in Africa because its all about OIL! Even the President of the USA said that Oil is" spilling " out of African Countries every day so like the good guys the warmongers are they will go in and take control of all the exports and the pockets of the war mongers will get even fatter while the poor get poorer.

Bush and his buddies won't have to worry about their next meal or prescription drug cost in their old age because they will be sitting pretty laughing at all of the " less fortunate" as the world goes by.