Foreign Minister to leave for Monrovia for truce talks

Ghana's Foreign Minister Addo Akufo-Addo and a senior west African official were due to leave for Liberia to try to negotiate a truce between President Charles Taylor's regime and rebels.

Mohamed ibn Chambas, the executive secretary of the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), brokering peace talks on Liberia said: "The Ghanaian foreign minister and I will leave in the afternoon around 2:00 pm (1400 GMT).

He said they would briefly stop over in Freetown, the Sierra Leonean capital and then spend the night in Conakry, the capital of Guinea.

"We will leave Conakry for Liberia tomorrow," he said.

ECOWAS and a UN-backed contact group trying to end Liberia's four-year war have said peace parleys in Ghana could not start until there was a truce.

On Monday, the LURD and government forces were still fighting in Monrovia.

Kabineh Ja'neh, the leader of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebel delegation in Ghana, said his movement was not to blame for the fighting, saying government forces had launched an offensive as "Taylor will do anything to undermine these peace talks."

"What do you think will be the reasonable response if we are attacked? If there is need for self-defence, we will defend ourselves."

But Mohammed Dukuly, the interim head of the Liberian government delegation, riposted: "Before the peace talks LURD were not in Monrovia. They are in Monrovia now so who is attacking whom?"