Wrapping up regional tour, top UN envoy returns to Liberia

Wrapping up a weeklong regional tour to rally support for the peace in Liberia, the top United Nations envoy for the country returned to the capital Monrovia today to complete his security and humanitarian assessment report for the Security Council.

Jacques Paul Klein, Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Special Representative for Liberia, returned to Monrovia after a series of meetings with West African leaders in neighbouring Guinea, Sierra Leone, and yesterday, Côte d'Ivoire.

At every stop, Mr. Klein stressed the responsibility of the international community to support the political changes underway in Liberia. A failed Liberia, he has said, "will spell disaster for…the sub-region."

Yesterday in Abidjan, Mr. Klein raised the issue of conducting cross-border operations by opening humanitarian corridors between Côte d'Ivoire and Liberia after humanitarian agencies asked him to, and President Laurent Gbagbo and other government officials indicated they would facilitate flow of relief assistance.

President Gbagbo and Prime Minister Seydou Diarra also pledged their support for a UN peacekeeping operation in Liberia and stressed the importance of stabilizing the volatile border region between the two countries.

Mr. Klein is now expected to meet with the joint UN assessment teams working in and around Monrovia - a second wave of experts is due later today - and will begin to pull together an assessment report to the Security Council on the requirements for a UN stabilization force and peacekeeping mission. He hopes to present the report to the Council in New York within the next two weeks.

Meanwhile on the ground today, a team from the UN World Health Organization (WHO), the Liberian Ministry of Health, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), and other partners began sanitizing some of the wells in Monrovia. The team expects to treat some 5,000 wells with chlorine.