LIBERIA: Liberia's warring factions yesterday named a low-profile businessman seen as a shrewd consensus builder to guide their broken west African state out of 14 years of bloodshed and anarchy and towards elections.
Unlike the two other shortlisted candidates, Mr Gyude Bryant (54) was not a household name. But he is viewed as a more neutral figure to chair the interim government when caretaker President Moses Blah steps down in October.
The aim of the new administration, backed by west African states and the United Nations, will be to end more than a decade of violence, disarm warrior bands and hold elections in 2005.
Liberia has been given fresh hope since last week's flight into exile of pariah leader Charles Taylor, who handed power to Mr Blah. Two rebel factions holding at least three-quarters of Liberia and the government signed a peace deal this week.
"My top priority will be to heal the pain, the hurt and the wounds that we have accumulated over the years," Mr Bryant said. "The hopes of the Liberian people are so high and their expectations are awesome."
Mr Bryant, of the minor Liberia Action Party, is a leading figure in the Episcopal Church, one of Liberia's main religious denominations.
Information Minister Mr Reginald Goodridge described him as "level-headed".
"He will be the perfect type of glue that will bring together this country," Mr Goodridge said at Monrovia's airport, where Mr Blah met west African mediators ahead of a planned tour of states involved in Liberia's war.
"We still have a long way to go. We have come to arrange the transition in October and to set up the transitional government," the chief mediator, Nigeria's Abdulsalami Abubakar, told reporters.
Other candidates for interim leader were former UN official and vigorous Taylor opponent Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and Rudolph Sherman, who heads a coalition of parties regarded as broadly sympathetic to Mr Taylor.
A 58-year-old opposition veteran, Wesley Johnson, was named as the deputy chairman of the transition government by the warring parties meeting in the Ghanaian capital, Accra.
Conflict has battered Liberia, wrecking one of the region's better-off countries and turning it into a place where drugged-up young gunmen murder, rape and pillage without qualm.
Insurgencies in neighbouring Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Guinea can all be traced at least partly to Liberia's anarchy.
Mr Taylor's departure paved the way for rebels of Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) to hand over control of parts of the capital Monrovia to a regional peacekeeping force backed by US troops and aircraft.