LIBERIA: Liberian President Charles Taylor, under US pressure to quit, said yesterday he had agreed to step down but urged the world to send peacekeepers to prevent chaos in the aftermath.
President Bush was encouraged by Mr Taylor's words and has told the Pentagon to send experts to west Africa to discuss with the UN and other countries in the region how to achieve stability in Liberia, a spokesman said.
A senior Nigerian official said Mr Taylor, a former warlord suspected of instigating a tangle of west African conflicts and indicted by a war crimes court in Sierra Leone, had accepted an offer of asylum.
Mr Taylor's departure has been called essential for peace by Mr Bush, who visits Africa next week and is mulling the possibility of sending hundreds of troops to help end nearly 14 years of non-stop violence in Liberia.
"The important thing here is for international peacekeepers to come to Liberia as quickly as possible to take charge of the situation if I am going to step down," Mr Taylor told reporters outside the presidential mansion, warning that if they did not it "could be extremely chaotic".
West African military chiefs meeting in Ghana pledged 3,000 troops from the region and said they also hoped for contributions from the United States, South Africa and Morocco.
They want a total peacekeeping force of at least 5,000.
Mr Bush's spokesman said the US president was encouraged by Mr Taylor's offer to go.
"The president urges Mr Taylor to back up his encouraging words with deeds so that stability of the region can be achieved, so that peace can become effective," Mr Ari Fleischer told reporters aboard Air Force One.
Mr Fleischer said Mr Bush had not yet decided whether to send US peacekeepers to Liberia, but left open the possibility that a decision could come this weekend.
Mr Taylor has been under growing pressure to stand down since some 700 people were killed last month in rebel attacks on Monrovia.
The insurgents hold nearly two-thirds of a country founded more than 150 years ago by freed American slaves.
Aid workers and military sources said rebels skirmished with Mr Taylor's forces well outside Monrovia yesterday. They hoped it did not indicate another brewing attempt to seize power.
Inside the battered city, police fired in the air to break up a march by hundreds of people demanding that Mr Taylor step down. They stoned police vehicles. One marcher carried a US flag, others scrawled anti-Taylor slogans on torn cardboard.
A senior official in Nigeria said Mr Taylor had accepted an offer of asylum and been told he should take it up this month instead of within 40 days as he had requested.
When asked, Mr Taylor did not deny that he had accepted. But he said it was not the most important issue for now.