The News Review:

- LIBERIA: UN INDICTMENT OF TAYLOR BLAMED FOR ‘BLOODBATH’.
- Nigeria Readies Peace Force for Liberia; Battles Go On
- Fighting heats up in Liberia
- Air Force teams keeping busy with security missions in Liberia
- LIBERIA: Lull in fighting allows Monrovia residents to search for food
- Liberia’s Taylor asks Dutch war crimes lawyer to represent him
- UN vs. Guns

LIBERIA: UN INDICTMENT OF TAYLOR BLAMED FOR ‘BLOODBATH’.
Free with registration – Interpress Service – AccessMyLibrary.com – Jul 24, 2003
A cease-fire signed in Accra on June 17 and trumpeted across the world barely lasted a week; the rebels in this war-torn country continued to push forward in what military experts believe is the final push by them to capture Monrovia, which remains the only major city not under the control of rebels who now control two- thirds of the country. The rebels of LURD (Liberians United for Reconciliation and democracy) and MODEL (Movement for Democracy in Liberia) however say that they are responding to attacks by government forces. From the moment the indictment by the Sierra Leone Special Court of Charles Taylor, legitimate President of Liberia, was made public on June 4, for his role in the Sierra Leonean civil war, it was clear that the peace talks in Ghana would fail to end the Liberian war. At least, it was clear the outcome would be greatly influenced by the indictment, and that is what has happened. No matter how the peace process is viewed, the situation was made more complicated by the indictment than had been expected. Many observers and commentators believe that the ill-timed indictment of Taylor is the cause of the current escalation of fighting in Liberia, with the rebels confident of overrunning the government forces as Taylor is under.

Nigeria Readies Peace Force for Liberia; Battles Go On
New York Times – Jul 24, 2003
Nigeria has also offered a second battalion, of 650 men. The arrival of a Nigerian vanguard could begin a sequence of events that, United Nations officials hope, would end with the departure of President Charles G. Taylor and a firm United States commitment of peacekeeping troops. But although the State Department has contracted to provide logistical support for a military force in Liberia, and President Bush has repeatedly said the United States would support a peacekeeping mission, Washington has not committed to sending troops.

Fighting heats up in Liberia
TVNZ – Jul 24, 2003
Militarysources said fighting seesawed around the key Stockton Creekbridge, which earlier in the day had been captured by rebels asthey tried to surround the capital and zero in on President CharlesTaylor’s home. Another 20 USMarines flew into the US embassy on helicopters from Sierra Leoneon Wednesday, a US military spokesman said. Their arrival completeda planned reinforcement of the compound by 41 crack fighters. But frustrationgrew among residents at US inaction in the face of the bloodlettingin the city, where tens of thousands of terrified refugees arehuddled. “They aresending Marines to guard an empty shell. I used to love theAmericans but I hate them now and I want them all to die,” saidJerome Wrey, protesting outside the embassy to urge the UnitedStates to intervene and stop the fighting.

Air Force teams keeping busy with security missions in Liberia
estripes.com – Jul 24, 2003
Prejean?s 56th Expeditionary Rescue Squadron, based at Naval Air Station Keflavik,
Iceland, sent three HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters to Sierra Leone, on the West Africa coast
north of Liberia. About 100 airmen from the aviation units and Germany-based security forces squadrons
now fall under the 398th Air Expeditionary Group. The group was established at the Sierra
Leone base after it arrived July 13, group commander Col. Steven Dreyer said. The mission Monday was the unit?s first, but the airmen remain on alert. They
aren?t allowed to stray far from their compound or go into Freetown, Dreyer said. ?The mission is a fluid one,? Dreyer said.

LIBERIA: Lull in fighting allows Monrovia residents to search for food
IRINnews.org – Jul 24, 2003
A US government spokesman in Washington said President George Bush had not yet taken a decision on whether to send any US troops to Liberia. He has put a flotilla of three warships carrying 4,500 sailors and marines on stand by for possible deployment to the country, which has known little but civil war for the past 14 years. The first Nigerian troops to land in Liberia will include the 774-strong 15th battalion, which is currently on a UN peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone, Patrick Coker, a spokesman of the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) said. Another batallion is due to come from Nigeria itself. The two batallions will be led by the chief of staff of the Nigerian army, General Martin Luther Agwai, who is a veteran of UN peacekeeping operations. Agwai served as the deputy force commander of UNAMSIL for two years and subsequently worked as a senior official of the department of peacekeping operations at UN headquarters in New York. Chambas told reporters in Dakar:”[His job] is to move the battalion to Monrovia as quickly as possible.

Liberia’s Taylor asks Dutch war crimes lawyer to represent him
abc.net.au – Jul 24, 2003
“Taylor has asked me to give him all the assistance necessary under the circumstances,” the lawyer, Michail Wladimiroff, said. Mr Wladimiroff said the request was made recently but would not elaborate. Mr Taylor was indicted in June by the UN Special Court in Sierra Leone for crimes against humanity and war crimes during the decade-long civil war in Liberia’s north-western neighbour, in which some 250,000 people lost their lives. Mr Taylor is also under UN sanctions, including an arms embargo, for his perceived role in that war and alleged links to the trade in so-called “blood diamonds” mined by the Sierra Leonean rebels. Mr Wladimiroff was one of three lawyers appointed to assist judges at the UN war crimes court in The Hague with the trial of former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugolavia (ICTY) court sacked him last October after he told a local newspaper that Milosevic would be found guilty if the trial ended right away. Tags: courts-and-trials, international-law, unrest-conflict-and-war, liberia
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UN vs. Guns
Lew Rockwell – Jul 24, 2003
In
hindsight, would Europeans have preferred that no resistance was
put up against Hitler? Should the French or Norwegian resistance
movements simply have given up? Surely this would have minimized
war causalities. Many
countries already ban private gun ownership. Rwanda and Sierra Leone
are two notable examples. Yet, with more than a million people hacked
to death over the last seven years, were their citizens better off
without guns?
Political
scientist Rudy Rummel estimates that the 15 worst regimes during
the 20th century killed 151 million of their own citizens. Even
assuming that the 300,000-gun-deaths-per-year-in-armed-conflicts
figure is accurate, the annual rate of government-sanctioned killing
is five times higher. Adding the UN’s estimated deaths from gun
suicides, homicides, and accidents still provides a number that
is only a third as large. Of
course, this last numerical example is questionable as gun control
is more likely to increase than reduce violent crime.