The New York Times

November 26, 2003

Nigerian Says He May Return Liberia's Ex-Leader for Trial if Liberia Asks

By SOMINI SENGUPTA

DAKAR, Senegal, Nov. 25 — Having offered asylum last August to Charles G.
Taylor, Liberia's former president, who is wanted on war crimes charges,
Nigeria said Tuesday that it would persuade Mr. Taylor to face trial in
Liberia, should it seek to prosecute him.

The Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, has in the past rejected
turning over Mr. Taylor to a United Nations-backed war crimes tribunal in
Sierra Leone. Mr. Taylor is charged with crimes against humanity in
connection with his alleged support for rebels in Sierra Leone.

Speaking to reporters at his farm outside Lagos, Nigeria's commercial
center, Mr. Obasanjo said, "If Liberia asks him to come home and face
something, I believe he will understand sufficiently the need to go,"
according to wire service reports.

Later, in a telephone interview, Mr. Obasanjo's spokeswoman, Remi Oyo,
said Nigeria had made no promises to shield Mr. Taylor from Liberian law.
She did point out that Mr. Taylor, in the asylum agreement, promised not
to run afoul of Nigerian law, nor to cause trouble in Liberia from afar.

Under a peace deal, Liberia has a transitional government composed of Mr.
Taylor's loyalists and enemies and the beginnings of what is supposed to
be a 15,000-strong United Nations peacekeeping force. But the fighters
have not yet turned in their guns, and no one has even begun to discuss
how to redress abuses.

No Liberian court has asked for Mr. Taylor's extradition. Indeed, the
courts are barely functioning.

Nigeria must maintain a delicate balance: It must be careful not to appear
to shield an accused war criminal, and it must consider the potential for
further chaos in the fragile region should Mr. Taylor be turned over to
the tribunal.

"Nigeria is playing for time," said Chidi Odinkalu, director of the
Justice Initiative of the Open Society Institute, in Abuja, Nigeria's
capital.

The longer Nigeria can keep Mr. Taylor in check in his exile in Calabar,
on the southern coast, Mr. Odinkalu added, the less of a threat he is
likely to pose to the region and the greater the chances that Liberians
will erect a mechanism to try accused war criminals on its own soil.

The chairman of Liberia's transitional government, Gyude Bryant, has said
he supports having Mr. Taylor face the Special Court for Sierra Leone. But
whether he can muster support in his cabinet, many of whose members are
Mr. Taylor's supporters, remains unclear.

President Obasanjo also said no invitation would be extended to Zimbabwe's
president, Robert Mugabe, for a meeting of heads of state of the
Commonwealth that is to be held in Abuja, starting Dec. 5. The
Commonwealth suspended Zimbabwe after Mr. Mugabe's disputed re-election in
2002, and Queen Elizabeth II and several heads of state threatened a
boycott if he attended the meeting.

Ms. Oyo said the suspension forced Nigeria to rule out an invitation to
Mr. Mugabe, in the same way that Nigeria, under its former leader, Sani
Abacha, had been kept out of previous Commonwealth meetings.

-
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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