UN envoy confirms Nigeria ready to deploy 2 battalions to war-torn Liberia

Responding to persistent appeals for the deployment of an international force in war-riven Liberia, Nigeria has agreed to send two battalions to the West African nation to be the vanguard of a broader engagement by the international community, the senior United Nations envoy to the country said today.

Speaking to reporters following his briefing to the Security Council on the latest developments in Liberia, Jacques Klein, Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Special Representative, said the latest plan is to have a battalion of Nigerian troops from the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) re-deploy to the Liberian capital Monrovia. That force, which had been scheduled to rotate back to Nigeria, would be joined shortly afterwards by another battalion currently in Lagos.

Meanwhile in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, Nigeria’s Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Martin Luther Agwai met with senior UNAMSIL officials to discuss such plans. Members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the UNAMSIL Force Commander, Lt. Gen. Daniel Opande, and representatives of the United States military also joined in the talks.

Confirming that his country would be deploying two battalions, Gen. Agwai told reporters that a final decision on the departure date was still to be taken. When ECOWAS forces move in, he added, they would remain in Liberia until combatants were disarmed and elections held. “We will do there exactly what we did in Sierra Leone. I hope groups fighting in Liberia will soon realize they have to stop,” General Agwai said.

For his part, Mr. Klein stressed that the situation in Liberia was such that “we stand between two options: hope and disaster. Hope that we can quickly move troops in, stop the killing, stabilize the situation. Disaster, nothing is done.”

The UN envoy noted that the key to the Nigerian deployment was speed and timeliness. “Hopefully once that ECOWAS structure was in place, that would trigger the American response,” he said, adding that in the meantime, the US Government has offered $10 million to help sustain the logistical needs of the battalions.

“Once we have a safe and stable environment, then we can send in an assessment team to determine what is needed,” Mr. Klein said. “But the country is basically destroyed, so it means major rebuilding across the spectrum of health care, education, rebuilding police, rebuilding military – the whole spectrum of what a civil society is all about.”