Global Policy Forum

By Somini Sengupta

President Charles Taylor of Liberia accused the United States today of supporting his rebel enemies, regretted having been misunderstood and maligned by Washington, and reiterated his pledge to step aside once American troops arrive to keep the peace in his country.

But he also promised to return home after what he called "a cooling-off period" in exile. Mr. Taylor would not say during an interview today how quickly he was prepared to leave, only that it would be in the "shortest possible time" after the arrival of a peacekeeping force. Otherwise, he said, there would be bedlam on the streets. "If we high-tailed out of here without an international force, don't you think there would be a free-for-all?" an unflappable Mr. Taylor wondered aloud. "How short is short? Very short." Asked about his legacy, Mr. Taylor, who faces a 17-count indictment for crimes against humanity, said he wanted most of all to be remembered as "the man that brought peace to Liberia."

On Sunday, Mr. Taylor announced that he had accepted an offer of asylum in Nigeria, the West African powerhouse. He said today that he would use his time away to look through his presidential papers and write, and that he would ultimately return home to be engaged in the political life of his country once more. "I'll be here to serve my people if the Liberian people want me in the future," he said Asked whether he planned to run for re-election, he said, "I don't see that in the very near future."

Last week, President Bush called for Mr. Taylor's swift departure and said it was the necessary first step for any American involvement in peacekeeping efforts in Liberia, a West African nation of 3 million people founded 150 years ago by Americans freed from slavery.

This afternoon, in a wide-ranging interview under a bright chandelier in a fourth floor meeting room inside the Presidential Mansion, Mr. Taylor took on the United States government but was careful not to offend. "My regret is that they never understood me," he said of the United States. "They never gave me a chance." He added: "From day one, there was `No, Taylor is the wrong guy and that we won't help him.' There was this widespread antagonism against my government. Nobody wanted me to win." He described the rebel group Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, commonly known here as LURD, as Islamic extremists who should be a source of worry to the Bush administration. At the same time, he contended that both LURD and Movement for Democracy in Liberia, another rebel group, known as Model, had enjoyed the blessings of the American government.

Mr. Taylor said his forces had captured rebel soldiers who had been trained by American troops in Guinea, a staunch American ally whose autocratic president, Lansana Conte, is among Mr. Taylor's chief adversaries. "LURD and Model are covert fighting forces of the United States government," Mr. Taylor asserted during the interview. But later he asserted that the United States government might be unaware of the rebels' extremist tendencies. "America has been known to unknowingly, for good reasons, support a cause that turns around to haunt them," he said.

Mr. Taylor dismissed his indictment, brought by a United Nations-backed tribunal in connection with his role in the war in neighboring Sierra Leone, as baseless and "politically motivated," and he said he had no intention of appearing before a court in a foreign country. He criticized the court's prosecutor, David Crane, as a "zealous American." And he compared his own plight to that of the first President George Bush, who was accused of war crimes in a court in Belgium in connection with a bombing in Baghdad that killed 403 people in the Persian Gulf war of 1991. "I don't think anyone should deal with a politically motivated indictment," Mr. Taylor said. "That's a nonstarter."

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