ECOWAS MILITARY & POLICE CHIEFS MEET IN MONROVIA

MONROVIA — Military and police chiefs from six west African countries met in Liberia on Tuesday to assess security threats to the country’s second post-war elections next month.

The security bosses from Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria and Senegal met behind closed doors, in a meeting following a mini-summit by their heads of state in Abuja last week, an AFP correspondent said.

They were expected to release a communique after the meeting.

As Liberia heads to the crucial election on October 11, seen as a litmus test of its post-war democracy, security concerns are high after Ivory Coast election violence left weapons and mercenaries circulating between the neighbouring countries.

Liberian authorities last month announced a seizure of a “worrisome” amount of arms and ammunition near the border with Ivory Coast, which is still recovering from a bloody post-election crisis.

During the Abuja meeting, the presidents “urged the United Nations to intensify joint UNOCI-UNMIL (peacekeeping missions) monitoring and control of the common border zone between the two countries”.

They expressed concerns over the presence of armed groups which may be “used to perpetrate violence and disrupt the elections”.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is seeking a second term in office, as the still fragile west African nation recovers from successive civil wars between 1989 and 2003.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees poured into the country earlier this year during the four-month post-election dispute in Ivory Coast in which 3,000 were estimated to have been killed.

Source: AFP