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Liberia rebels want U.S. troops
(CNN) -- Liberia's rebels are pleading with the U.S. to deploy "an overwhelming presence" before peacekeeping troops from West African nations arrive in the war-torn country. The call from the rebels, who control 60 percent of Liberia and have been fighting a four-year civil war to oust President Charles Taylor, came as U.S. President George W. Bush said Taylor must first leave before U.S. troops were sent. "We would like to see an overwhelming presence of American troops on the ground. Whatever it takes to help us," Kabineh Ja'neh, spokesman for Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), told Reuters on Tuesday. "We would prefer the Americans to come in first and not the other way around," Ja'neh said. "It makes a big difference ... It would be a psychological comfort to see new faces," he said. Bush has pledged to help enforce a fragile cease-fire between the rebels and Taylor's troops. After a meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Bush said on Monday: "We want to enable ECOWAS to get in and help create the conditions necessary for the cease-fire to hold, that Mr. Taylor must leave, that we'll participate with the troops." The president also said the United States was assessing the situation in Liberia to determine its role there, assisting a peacekeeping force of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The U.S. European Command has sent more than 100 military personnel, three HH-60 helicopters and a C-130 aircraft to West Africa to support a 50-man U.S. military humanitarian assessment team already in Liberia, the sources said Monday. Bush sent the military assessment team to determine whether U.S. peacekeeping troops should be deployed to maintain a delicate cease-fire there between national forces and rebels. Fighting has forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes. Many have sought refuge in Monrovia, where they have virtually no food or water and sanitary facilities are poor. Nearby Nigeria has offered Taylor asylum. He has agreed to step down but has offered no timetable. A U.N.-backed special court in Sierra Leone indicted Taylor on war crimes charges in June, accusing him of arming and training rebels in exchange for diamonds during Sierra Leone's 10-year civil war that, according to the U.S. government left 50,000 people dead. Taylor denies the charges. The U.S. helicopters and personnel en route to the region will operate between Sierra Leone, Senegal and Liberia, the U.S. military sources said. The aircraft will allow the assessment team to move about more freely. Most of the additional personnel are crews and support and maintenance specialists for the aircraft. Until now, U.S. troops in the region had relied on helicopters hired locally for brief periods, according to the sources. Some additional U.S. military personnel are also in the region, working out of Ghana, to determine what military forces from West African nations might contribute, U.S. military sources said. -- CNN's Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr contributed to this report
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