ECOWAS team wants Liberia-Guinea border monitors

MONROVIA, Liberia (Reuters) -- West African states should send monitors to the border between Liberia and Guinea to provide independent feedback on raids the estranged neighbors accuse each other of backing, the head of a fact-finding mission said.

Ambassador Ralph Uwechue, the Nigerian head of a team sent by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), also raised the prospect of an ECOWAS-sponsored meeting between the leaders of the two countries.

"Up to now, it (has been about) accusations by one country or the other," he told Reuters in an interview on Saturday.

"We now want to have independent observers...people from the ECOWAS region, people with a stake in peace in this sub-region, to watch out for the cause of the trouble and to report to ECOWAS to help ensure that it does not escalate," he said.

The attacks and similar cross-border raids into Guinea blamed on rebels from Sierra Leone, where the United Nations is trying to end nine years of civil war, have killed hundreds of people and raised fears for regional stability.

Uwechue said he did not know how many observers would be needed, but made clear they would be simply monitors, and not a revival of the ECOMOG peacekeeping force sent by ECOWAS to end the civil war in Sierra Leone and before that in Liberia.

He was speaking in the Liberian capital Monrovia, where the team travelled after spending several days in Guinea. They were also due to visit Sierra Leone, whose Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels enjoy close ties with Liberia.

Liberia, which has been fighting insurgents in northern Lofa county since July, accuses Guinea of harboring the attackers.

Guinea says Liberia and Burkina Faso are backing the assailants, including RUF rebels, whom it says have attacked settlements near its borders with Liberia and Sierra Leone since early September. Guinea says over 600 people have been killed.

Uwechue said ECOWAS observers could be deployed in the border area as soon as his team submitted its report.

"They will be there (until) tension has gone down completely, and confidence building has advanced to a point where we do not see a repeat of what has happened in the last few months or years," he said.

"A good deal of this problem is suspicion and lack of confidence," he added.

Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, who form the Mano River Union economic organization, have tried to resolve previous border tensions by agreeing to joint security patrols.

Such plans have rarely materialized and previous negotiations have broken down amid mutual recriminations.

But Uwechue said Presidents Charles Taylor of Liberia and Lansana Conte of Guinea now seemed willing to meet each other, and ECOWAS may well arrange a mini-summit around the meeting.

"This is an ECOWAS mission to see peace prevail in our region. It is the wish of both presidents for this -- both have made this proposal," he added.

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