LONDON (AlertNet) - While President Charles Taylor sits increasingly isolated in Monrovia, momentum is building behind peace proposals drawn up by Taylor opponents, regional analysts and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

ECOWAS, the regional body overseeing the peace process, hopes to convene a meeting of a proposed contact group on Liberia on the sidelines of a discussion of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development at the U.N. General Assembly in New York on September 16.

The group is made up of the United States, France, Britain, Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Senegal, and would oversee a ceasefire, disarmament and deployment of an international stabilisation force.

Taylor’s foes hope that the international community will not want to see its efforts to bring peace to Sierra Leone wasted by a new flare-up of the region’s conflict, which began when Taylor invaded Liberia from Ivory Coast in December 1989 and spread to Sierra Leone and Guinea.

However, they will have to act quickly to seize what little momentum remains. Peace efforts in the Democratic Republic of Congo are likely to sap scarce U.N. resources, and the United States and Britain are increasingly preoccupied with the prospect of an attack on Iraq.

Conflict in Sierra Leone has ended with the help of ECOWAS, a U.N. force and the British military, but rebels in Liberia have vowed to fight their way to Monrovia and oust Taylor.

Sanctions including a ban on diamond exports and on travel for senior officials were imposed in May, 2001, because of Taylor’s support for the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone, and the U.N. panel overseeing Liberia’s compliance is due to report to the Security Council on October 8.

WEIGHTY REPORT

The government produced a weighty report on its revenues from the timber trade and the Liberian shipping registry, but the panel said on September 4 that the report had failed to answer its questions.

Taylor is understandably eager to see sanctions lifted, arguing that the RUF has disarmed, but his many critics still seem his as a substantial threat to regional security. Regional realpolitik may enable him to wriggle out of testifying at Sierra Leone’s war crimes tribunal, as several regional leaders may believe this would set an unhelpful precedent.

Burkina Faso’s President Blaise Compaore has had an apparent change of heart after years of support for Taylor, hosting a meeting of the political opposition and the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) in Ouagadougou in July.

He may also have been encouraged by the focus on international terrorism after the September 11 attacks in the United States, and U.S. concerns about potential links with arms and diamond dealing -- though no one managed to substantiate allegations of links between Taylor and al Qaeda.

A national reconciliation conference opened in Monrovia on August 24, chaired by Catholic Archbishop Michael Francis but with no significant members of the political opposition. Taylor’s opponents -- most of whom dare not travel to Monrovia anyway -- dismiss it as a side show to divert attention away from the LURD rebellion. Taylor says it is an effort to look beneath the country’s present crisis to the underlying issues of national identity.

There are no easy solutions to Liberia’s plight. The international community has tried ignoring Taylor, during the civil war, and then engaging with Taylor, through elections.

Neither has succeeded, and Brussels-based AlertNet member the International Crisis Group produced a briefing paper on August 19 proposing a formula for Taylor to be persuaded to stand aside before elections due next year and go into exile in exchange for guarantees of impunity.

'WIGGLE ROOM'

"The best solution is for Taylor to go, but I don’t think anyone has a clear way forward as to how to achieve that," Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the runner up in the 1997 elections and a staunch Taylor opponent, told AlertNet. "He’ll make all those promises and find himself some wiggle room and return to business as usual some way down the road."

She added: "None of us trust him to hold free and fair elections. If he’s a candidate the process will be as flawed as in 1997."

In the mid-1990s the international community took the view that allowing Taylor to win an election might stop him killing people, but it has also given him a free hand to carry on looting the state.

No one relishes the prospect of a second Taylor presidency but domestic opposition is firmly crushed and most of Liberia’s opposition politicians live in exile. "Liberia points out all the weaknesses in the ‘Democracy for Africa’ argument," said a human rights officer based in the region.

The LURD rebels have attacked close to Monrovia but they are more successful at hit and run raids than at holding on to territory and government forces retook Tubmanburg, 60 km northwest of Monrovia, in July.

Taylor does not entirely trust the national army, which still contains many of the fighters who opposed his National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) militia during the civil war.

He has recalled many of his old NPFL generals to lead militias fighting on the front line. Human Rights Watch has expressed concern that recruitment of children has resumed. With both sides using forcible recruitment, it is less than clear who exactly is fighting whom.

Until Taylor can be brought into the international fold, there is little hope of post-war reconstruction. A few brave companies are exploring for diamonds or logging the country’s forests, but most of the money goes straight to the presidency. It is hard to imagine how an election can be held under such conditions – which may be exactly the excuse Taylor needs to postpone it.