LIBERIA Leaders gather for resignation

Attacks will resume if Taylor doesn't leave the country, a rebel leader said.
MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) -- President Charles Taylor shook hands with his designated successor as his long-promised resignation ceremony started in the war-battered capital, attended by West African leaders pushing for his departure.
Rebels besieging the capital threatened to resume fighting if the former warlord -- blamed for 14 years of bloodshed in Liberia and indicted for war crimes in Sierra Leone -- doesn't leave the country immediately after the hand over today.
Wearing a white safari suit and holding his trademark staff, Taylor arrived hours late for the ceremony at his Executive Mansion, heavily guarded by Nigerian and South African forces.
Vice President Moses Blah waited for him with Liberian and regional officials in a velvet-draped room, without electricity, like the rest of the capital. Steel blinds guarded windows against assassination attempts, like a 1996 try on Taylor's life where two aides were killed in the same building.
Blah and Taylor stood to attention in front of gilded thrones for the national anthem.
Response
Outside, Monrovia's beleaguered people cheered the Nigerian peacekeepers -- part of a vanguard peace force meant to build to 3,250 West African soldiers -- but reserved celebrations over the former warlord's resignation until it was official.
"I can hardly believe it. He has brought too much suffering on the Liberian people," said Henry Philips, 38, a former security official. "His absence is better than his presence."
Many of the undisciplined, often-drugged Taylor fighters who had previously patrolled the area appeared to have slipped away into the city with their weapons.
Taylor had pledged to hand over power at one minute before noon, but was delayed at the airport where he welcomed South African President Thabo Mbeki, Ghanaian President John Kufuor, Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano and Togolese Prime Minister Koffi Sama.
Rebels have rejected Taylor's choice of successor -- a longtime ally and comrade in arms -- and demanded that a neutral candidate be chosen to preside over a transition government until elections can be held.
Today, pickup trucks full of armed rebels raced toward the front as insurgents threatened to resume fighting if Taylor stays in the country after turning over power.
"Unless Taylor leaves the country by one minute past 12 noon, I shall attack," rebel Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Abdulla Seyeah Sheriff said from Monrovia's rebel-held island port area. "If Taylor leaves the country, there'll be peace."
Taylor has accepted an offer of asylum in Nigeria but has also hedged on when he will go. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo was not attending the resignation, but his aides said Taylor was expected in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, as early as today.
Two months of intermittent rebel sieges have left over 1,000 civilians dead in Monrovia, as government and insurgent forces fought over the city of 1.3 million. The war left Taylor controlling little but downtown, referred to derisively by rebels as Taylor's "Federal Republic of Central Monrovia."
Accusations against U.S.
Under pressure to resign from the United States and West African leaders, Taylor remained defiant in a Sunday farewell address to the nation -- declaring himself "the sacrificial lamb" to end what he said was a U.S.-backed rebel war against his besieged regime.
He called the uprising an "American war" and suggested it was motivated by U.S. eagerness for Liberia's gold, diamonds and other reserves.
"They can call off their dogs now," Taylor said of Washington's alleged support of the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, or LURD. "We can have peace."
U.S. Ambassador John Blaney dismissed the charge as he waited for Taylor's resignation ceremony to begin. "We haven't supported LURD," he said.
Taylor launched Liberia's 14 years of near-constant conflict with a 1989-96 insurgency. Aid agencies estimate virtually all of Liberia's roughly 3 million people have been chased from their home by war, at one time or another.
Taylor was elected president in 1997 on threats of plunging the country into renewed bloodshed. Rebels -- including some of Taylor's rivals from the previous war -- took up arms against him two years later.
His ragtag forces, paid by looting, are accused by rights groups and Liberia's people of routine raping, robbing, torture, forced labor and summary killings. Rebels, to a lesser extent so far, are also accused of abuse.
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