wfn.org | Church groups call for intervention in Liberia

["NewsDesk" <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

June 13, 2003  News media contact: Tim Tanton7(615)742-54707Nashville, Tenn. 
10-31-71BI{322}

By United Methodist News Service

Officials with the World Council of Churches and Church World Service are
calling for international help in Liberia, where fighting between government
and rebel forces is raging and the nation's top leader has been indicted for
war crimes.

In a June 13 letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the top staff
executive of the World Council of Churches urged support for peace
initiatives in Liberia. 

The council is concerned about reports of escalating fighting between
government forces and the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy,
wrote the Rev. Konrad Raiser. "Thousands of people, including internally
displaced persons and refugees from neighboring countries, have once again
been uprooted and are on the move in search of security." Aid efforts have
been hampered, food, water and shelter are hard to find, and "looting and
plunder have added to the miseries" of the civilian population, he wrote.

Rebel groups are fighting government forces in different parts of the
country, already battered by more than a decade of war. Meanwhile, an
indictment against President Charles Taylor was unsealed June 4, accusing him
of war crimes against thousands of people during the country's previous civil
war, when he led a rebel faction. A U.N.-backed Special Court in Sierra Leone
handed down the indictment.

Raiser noted that the developments coincided with the June 4 opening of the
Liberian Peace Conference in Ghana, under the leadership of the Economic
Community of West African States and the U.N. International Contact Group on
Liberia. "We hope that the peace process, presently stalled, will be revived
with the active participation of all parties concerned, so that a genuine
search for a just and durable peace can begin by putting into effect an
immediate cease-fire and an end to hostilities," Raiser said.

He asked that the United Nations encourage the parties in the conflict to
agree on the presence of peacekeepers. "Given the gravity of this
near-anarchy situation that has developed, it is difficult to foresee a
cease-fire holding out without the backing of a credible peace-keeping
force," he wrote.

A week earlier, Church World Service, a humanitarian relief agency, urged the
United States to respond immediately to the crisis in Liberia. It also called
for the deployment of an African "stabilization force" in the country. Church
World Service is providing aid and attempting to rally U.S. churches and
government leaders to help Liberia.

The United Methodist Church is an active supporter of both the World Council
of Churches and Church World Service.

The Rev. John McCullough, executive director of Church World Service and a
United Methodist, expressed concern for the status of the peace talks, now
threatened by recent developments. 

"We also fear that in the chaos in Monrovia, where tens of thousands of
Liberians have taken refuge from the fighting that has engulfed their
country, humanitarian conditions will deteriorate and delivery of
humanitarian aid will be jeopardized, further deepening the misery of people
who already have suffered too long," he said.

Bishop John Innis, who leads the United Methodist Church in Liberia, has
provided food and blankets to displaced people flooding into Monrovia, the
nation's capital. 

The United Methodist Committee on Relief is responding to the crisis.
Donations to UMCOR can be designated for Liberia Emergency, Advance
#150300-7, and dropped in church offering plates or sent to UMCOR, 475
Riverside Drive, Room 330, New York, NY 10115. Credit-card donations can be
made by calling (800) 554-8583.

# # #

Information for this report was provided by the United Methodist Committee on
Relief, Church World Service and the World Council of Churches.

 
 

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United Methodist News Service
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