The U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone today indicted Liberian President Charles Taylor, accusing him of "the greatest responsibility for war crimes, crimes against humanity and serious violations of international humanitarian law" in Sierra Leone's grisly 10-year civil war, which was declared over early last year.

Prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Taylor in Ghana, where he made a rare trip outside his country to attend talks beginning today with Liberian rebels.  It was unknown whether Ghanaian officials would respond to the warrant, as West African mediators at the talks were expected to be reluctant to see Taylor arrested after they invited him abroad for the negotiations.

Taylor is widely accused of supporting rebels with Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front during the civil war, whose tactics included hacking the limbs, lips and ears off thousands of civilians.  Taylor has been embroiled in a civil war in his own country for the past four years, and he controls only about 40 percent of Liberia (Clarence Roy-Macaulay, Associated Press/Yahoo! News, June 4). 

Liberia was previously mired in civil war from 1990-97, after which Taylor won the presidential election.  Taylor is under U.N. sanctions for his ties to the RUF (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo! News, June 4).

This is the first time the Special Court has issued an indictment against a sitting head of state and the first indictment of a head of state since Slobodan Milosevic was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

According to the chief prosecutor of the Special Court, David Crane, Taylor should be excluded from the talks in Ghana.  "The timing of this announcement was carefully considered in light of the important peace process begun this week," Crane said in a statement issued today in Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital.  "To ensure the legitimacy of these negotiations, it is imperative that the attendees know they are dealing with an indicted war criminal.  These negotiations can still move forward, but they must do so without the involvement of this indictee.  The evidence upon which this indictment was approved raises serious questions about Taylor's suitability to be a guarantor of any deal, let alone a peace agreement."

Crane's statement, which never refers to Taylor as the president of a sovereign state, says, "My office was given an international mandate by the United Nations and the Republic of Sierra Leone to follow the evidence impartially wherever it leads.  It has led us unequivocally to Taylor."  

The indictment was approved March 7, Crane said, but was unsealed today to coincide with the talks in Ghana.

Today's meeting in Ghana is the first face-to-face meeting between Taylor and two main rebel groups trying to oust his government, the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy and the Movement for Democracy in Liberia.  The country's 18 registered political parties will also participate.

The talks are brokered by 15 African countries and the United Nations.  Former Nigerian president Abdulsalami Abubakar will serve as broker on behalf of the 15-member Economic Community of West African States.  Seven African leaders were scheduled to attend, including South African President Thabo Mbeki and Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo.  A U.N. contact group will be present.

Before leaving Liberia's capital, Monrovia, Taylor released all prisoners of war but said he would refuse to negotiate directly with the rebels.  Last month Taylor rejected a proposal by U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers that he share power with the rebels in order to bring an end to the bloodshed. 

Liberia's previous war killed 250,000 people, while the latest conflict has driven 300,000 Liberians to flee the country (News 24, June 4).

Liberian Information Minister Reginald Goodridge said yesterday that mercenaries, not Liberian forces, were to blame for the instability in West Africa.

"There is a group of non-state actors, whom one could call warriors without borders ... parading through West Africa," he said.  "These people will do anything for a dollar."

Goodridge said four years of civil war and U.N. sanctions had rendered his country so poor it could not possibly launch attacks on other nations.

"Our country has been ranked 174 out of 175 nations ranked in terms of poverty," he said.  "We have no arms.  How can we be a threat to security in the sub-region?"

Besides being accused of meddling in Sierra Leone, Liberia has also been accused of taking part in the civil conflict in Ivory Coast (AFP, June 3).

Another 2,000 Liberian refugees, mostly women and children, escaped their country by paddling across the Cavaly River and arrived in western Ivory Coast over the past two days, bringing to 15,000 the number of Liberians who have arrived in the town of Tabou in the last 10 to 15 days, the United Nations said yesterday.  Liberian refugees now outnumber the town's 12,000 Ivorian inhabitants.

The acting UNHCR representative in the main Ivory Coast city of Abidjan, Panos Moumtzis, said the agency is scrambling to cope with the situation in Tabou, which has only an hour of electricity every day and already faces a shortage of clean water.  Torrential downpours are complicating the situation.

"We're in a race against the weather and the poor health condition of the new arrivals," said Moumtzis.  "We're very worried about the children should diarrheal outbreaks become widespread."

The agency is dispatching shelter materials to new arrivals and reopened a camp intended for 700.  Currently it shelters more than 2,500.  The UNHCR is also working to identify villages that will accept the refugees (U.N. release, June 3).