MONROVIA (AFP) - Liberia dismantled its warring factions to close the book on 14 years of war against the backdrop of new violence in the capital and amid concerns that promises to rehabilitate ex-combattants have yet to be fulfilled.
"We have dismantled a critical component of the war machine but it will be meaningless unless we create opportunities," said Moses Jarbo, the chairman of the national disarmament commission.
"A lack of psycho-social assistance to the ex-combatants will create a haven for those looking to recruit criminal elements."
Since the disarmament program resumed in April after a disastrous launch last December by the UN mission in Liberia (UNMIL), more than 96,000 men, women and children have enrolled, handing in some 27,000 weapons and millions of rounds of ammunition, according to the latest UNMIL statistics.
"I would like to take this moment to declare our organization, the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), officially dissolved," said Sekou Conneh, chairman of the group that took arms in 1999 against former president Charles Taylor to spark Liberia's second civil war since 1989.
A lack of funds has prevented the rehabilitation and reintegration phase from being implemented nationwide, leaving the majority of the ex-combattants without work and without prospects in the country of three million people, which is already battling an 80-percent unemployment rate.
"The thousands of young fighters are now the responsibility of the transitional government and will look up to you for leadership," said Lewis Brown, who served as foreign minister under Taylor in the now-defunct Government of Liberia.
"You did a wonderful job and fought the good fight but every good thing must come to an end," added Thomas Yaya Nimely, leader of the rebel Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), using his time at the podium to address the thousands of MODEL combattants who have yet to hand over their weapons.
The disarmament ceremony at the presidential mansion unfurled against a backdrop of tighter security in the capital following citywide riots last week that left at least 18 people dead and hundreds of properties including mosques, churches and religious schools burned to the ground.
Ethnic tensions between the mostly-Muslim Mandingos -- from whom LURD drew its strength -- and Liberia's other, mainly Christian ethnicities helped fuel the violence, along with mounting frustration at the dire living conditions faced by the majority of citizens in Africa's oldest independent republic.
Virtually all of Liberia is without clean water and electricity. Roads are impassable and there are few operating schools or health clinics. One in six Liberians relies on food aid.
An emergency curfew has been clamped on Monrovia since Friday, while security considerations prevented six west African heads of state from attending Wednesday's event.
"We knew there would be setbacks but we will not be derailed by a coalition of the unwilling," UN special envoy Jacques Klein said in his address to the audience that included government and civil society leaders and representatives from Liberia's international development partners.
"We cannot let this be another false beginning."
The disarmament operation is central to UNMIL's efforts to return a lasting peace to the war-battered nation, considered a linchpin for stability across volatile west Africa.
Reports are rampant of hidden arms caches both in Liberia and across its porous borders with Guinea and Ivory Coast, both of which are potential flashpoints for a return to violence in the region.
"This is a new chance for Liberia," said former Nigerian president Abdu Salami Abubakar, the chief mediator in the Liberian peace process for the Economic Community of West African States.
"I hope you do not blow it up."
11/03/2004 - 19:49 GMT - AFP