Monrovia, Liberia — Liberian President Charles Taylor renounced his peace pledge to cede power, announcing Friday he will serve to the January 2004 end of his term — and might run again.
"The vast majority of our people, including chiefs and others, are now protesting that I can't step aside without their approval," the Liberian warlord-turned-president told reporters in the capital, Monrovia.
Mr. Taylor's announcement, on a call-in talk show broadcast on radio and television, drew heated challenges from callers who accused him of reneging on a promise he had made at the June 4 opening of Liberian peace talks.
"I said I was "prepared" to step aside," Mr. Taylor answered, stressing the word "prepared." "I didn't say I was not going to run."
"I have a large following in this country," he said. "It is in the interest of peace that I'm prepared to step aside, but let nobody think that our backs are against the wall, so we are going to accept anything."
A spokesman for one of Liberia's two rebels groups said it was "not an option" for Mr. Taylor to remain in power.
Eugene Wilson spoke in Accra, capital of nearby Ghana, where Liberia's rebels and political parties including Mr. Taylor's were pursuing political discussions called for in a cease-fire signed Tuesday.
That deal, with the backing of the African Union, West Africa's leaders bloc, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations, calls for political discussions within 30 days leading to a transition government that excludes Mr. Taylor.
"This time around, Mr. Taylor will learn to respect, and come to realize that it's not going to be his way, but the way of the Liberian people," said Mr. Wilson, a representative of Liberia's eastern-based rebel group.
Mr. Taylor also announced Friday he would yield power at the end of his term only to Vice-President, Moses Blah, keeping power in the hands of their political party. Mr. Blah, who sat nearby nodding in approval as his boss spoke, would preside over elections at some indefinite date, the president said.
Friday's comments marked a significant retreat from his contrition at the opening of the Ghana peace conference — aimed at ending Liberia's three-year rebellion — when he drew applause from fellow African leaders by announcing he would quit.
Hours before the opening of that conference, a UN-Sierra Leone war-crimes court announced Mr. Taylor's indictment for backing a vicious rebel movement in neighbouring Sierra Leone and urged authorities in Ghana to arrest him.
Mr. Taylor also stands accused by the United Nations and rights groups of fomenting much of West Africa's conflicts for the past 14 years. He plunged Liberia into conflict in 1989 when he led a small force into the country to overthrow then-President Samuel Doe.
UN authorities accuse Mr. Taylor of gun- and diamond-trafficking with rebels in Sierra Leone, which is newly returning to peace after a 10-year terror campaign by brutal rebels allegedly backed by Mr. Taylor. The terror campaign killed tens of thousands in Sierra Leone, and left thousands mutilated by the rebels' signature atrocity — the hacking off of limbs with machetes.
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