MONROVIA, Liberia -- A cease-fire took effect in Liberia Wednesday with Washington and West Africa pressing President Charles Taylor and rebels to carry out in full their pledge to end their three-year-old war.\nThe cease-fire is the first step in an agreement signed Tuesday in Ghana that calls for Taylor to give up power. Another test comes this weekend with the expected arrival of a U.N.-supported cease-fire verification team, soon to be followed by a West African-led "stabilization force" of 2,000-plus troops.\nU.S. authorities confirm that some U.S. role was being considered in the force for Liberia, a nation founded by freed American slaves in the 19th century.\nRebels complained of at least two attacks on their positions after the 1 a.m. deadline for fighting to stop. West African officials who have been involved in talks in Ghana that led to the cease-fire played down the reported violations, saying it was still early.\n"The eyes of the world are on you now," former Nigerian military ruler Abdulsalami Abubakar warned Taylor's government and Liberia's two rebel movements.\nAbubakar urged the two sides "not to betray their Liberian compatriots."\nThe war has driven at least 1.3 million Liberians from their homes, and rights groups accuse both sides of widespread killing, raping, robbing and kidnapping of civilians.\nIn Ghana's capital, Accra, Taylor's ruling party, other Liberian parties and rebels opened political talks that under the deal are to lead to an interim government, one that would exclude Taylor, an indicted war-crimes suspect accused in 14 years of gunrunning, diamond-smuggling and conflict in West Africa.\nUnder the accord, Liberia's government, rebels and political parties will "seek, within 30 days, a comprehensive peace agreement. The peace agreement shall amongst other issues, cover ... formation of a transitional government, which will not include the current President."\nTaylor, then newly indicted by a U.N. war-crimes court and under threat of arrest, had announced at the June 4 opening of the talks that he would surrender power in the interest of peace.\n"If President Taylor is seen as a problem, then I will remove myself. I'm doing this because I'm tired of the people dying. I can no longer see this genocide in Liberia," Taylor said then.\nTaylor's six-year term would end in January.\nImmediately after the signing, Taylor's government suggested the cease-fire was the only binding part of the deal -- hedging on Taylor's surrender of power.
"It's a political discussion, including the issue of the stepping aside of President Taylor," spokesman Vaanii Paasawe said. "What we were successful in doing in Accra was to separate the cease-fire issue from the political questions."\nNews of the truce set off rejoicing in the capital Monrovia, a city of 1 million crowded with refugees living in shell-ruined buildings.\nOffshore, the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge stood waiting Wednesday, its military helicopters shuttling supplies for the heavily secured U.S. Embassy.\nThe warship, with 3,000 sailors, was deployed to evacuate Americans after rebels pushed to Liberia's capital earlier this month. But with calm holding for more than a week, American authorities said they expected the ship's stopover to be short.\nThe United States praised the truce and said it looked forward to the formation of an interim government without Taylor.\nIn Washington, State Department deputy spokesman Philip T. Reeker spoke of Liberians' suffering under Taylor and said those responsible for atrocities in West Africa's conflicts should be held accountable.\nU.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called the pact "an important step forward" and urged other countries to give relief aid.\nNeither Taylor nor his government made any additional public comment Wednesday on his ceding power, by far the most contentious part of the accord.\nEducated at a Boston business school and trained in a Libyan guerrilla camp, Taylor launched Liberia into conflict in 1989 when he led a small force into the country to overthrow then-President Samuel Doe.\nDoe and at least 150,000 other Liberians died in the seven-year civil war that followed.\nThe war, which saw repeated massacres and the capital repeatedly overrun by fighting, left Liberia in unrepaired ruin, with no electricity and shattered roads.\nTaylor emerged from the conflict as Liberia's strongest warlord and won presidential elections the next year. Fighting revived in 1999. Neighboring nations who saw Taylor as damaging their own stability are backing rebel movements battling to topple him.\nIf he cedes power, Taylor faces the prospect of trial at a U.N.-backed court for alleged war crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone, where he supported rebels who fought a 10-year insurgency.\nTaylor announced during the talks there would be no peace in Liberia as long as the indictment stood. "It has to be removed," he said.
