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Bush Tells President Taylor to Leave Liberia
President Bush told Liberian President Charles Taylor on Wednesday to leave his West African country and said the United States was looking at ways to end nearly 14 years of violence there.
Step one is seeing what Chuck's back looks like...
Strife in Liberia hangs over Bush's first visit to Africa next week, with the United States under pressure to act because of its historical ties to a country founded by freed American slaves more than 150 years ago. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Britain, France, West African countries and thousands of desperate Liberians have all called for U.S. troops to take the lead in restoring peace. "We are exploring all options as to how to keep the situation peaceful and stable," Bush told reporters at the White House. "One thing needs to happen... Mr. Taylor needs to leave the country."
When a Texan tells you to git out of town, you better git.
Bush had previously demanded simply that Taylor step down. An increasing number of people have suggested that Taylor could go into exile elsewhere in the region to try to end the bloody crisis, but the situation is complicated by an indictment for war crimes brought against him by a U.N.-backed court in Sierra Leone.
And we have to do what the U.N. tells us to do, right?
As a practical matter, if Chuck's not dead or in jug he's going to be getting his boyz together (using the usual shadowy means of financing) to make a comeback. So any solution that doesn't involve a firing squad just puts the problem into the basement, to grow more fangs...
U.N. diplomats said in New York that Taylor had already rejected an offer of asylum from Nigeria, which does not have a law under which he could be extradited to Sierra Leone to face the court. Taylor, accused of fanning more than a decade of conflict in the region, has demanded that the indictment be dropped.
No
West African leaders also suggest that might be the best way of ending Liberia's war and thereby helping ensure peace elsewhere.
They are also not happy with the idea that they might also have to face a war crimes trial someday.
"It may not satisfy purists on one side or the other, but we are not just looking at the fate of one man but that of three million people," Ghanaian Foreign Minister Nana Akufo-Addo told Reuters.
It'll be easier to help those three million people if we just remove one man. "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one."
Posted by: Steve 2003-07-02
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=16048