Military

DATE=10-01-03

TYPE=INTERVIEW

NUMBER=3-801

TITLE=LIBERIA

BYLINE=DAVID BORGIDA

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

CONTENT=

INTRODUCTION

Ambassador Herman Cohen, adjunct professor at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, discusses the arrival of UN peacekeepers in Liberia.

MR. BORGIDA

And now joining us, Ambassador Herman Cohen, Adjunct Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He is President and Co-Founder of Cohen and Woods International, and he was, as many of us recall, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa from 1989 to 1993. Thanks for joining us today on Newsline.

AMBASSADOR COHEN

You're welcome. I'm very pleased to be here.

MR. BORGIDA

Ambassador, the situation in Liberia do you think will get more settled and stable now that the UN forces are in control?

AMBASSADOR COHEN

I think they will, because Liberia has hit rock bottom. They can't get any worse I think. And it's important for the UN to come in quickly and really stabilize the place. The U.S. troops who had been there -- they just left -- I think did a very good job of telling people, look, calm down, stop fighting, you have to listen to the UN

The problem with the UN is that there are 15,000 troops who are due to come in and probably won't reach full complement until the end of the year. So between now and then there could be trouble in various areas where the UN hasn't really taken charge yet.

MR. BORGIDA

Well, let's talk about that. We've seen over recent months the times when Monrovia was a violent, violent place, and sometimes in the countryside less violence, but then more violence erupting outside the big cities and so on. Assess that more for us, the breadth of the country, in places still potentially violent?

AMBASSADOR COHEN

Still violent. You still have rebels who are fully armed. You still have Charles Taylor's army that's fully armed. So the highest priority right now is to disarm. And this is going to be the job of the UN blue helmets now.

MR. BORGIDA

You mentioned Charles Taylor, and I know you've been on our program before and I believe we've talked about Charles Taylor quite a bit. We haven't heard his name much in the last few weeks, have we?

AMBASSADOR COHEN

Well, some people are accusing him of controlling from a remote control sitting in Nigeria. They're saying he's still dealing in contraband and getting his cut for various deals, controlling the old army that he had before. And President Obasanjo of Nigeria has been told, look, get this guy in a box and stop letting him interfere.

MR. BORGIDA

Do you think that this situation in the weeks and months ahead -- this is one of our long-range questions -- will settle down? The UN peacekeepers clearly will have some mitigating effect on any violence in the short term. But as you pointed out I believe in answer to the first question, there is still the possibility that more violence will continue. With economic turmoil, with poverty on the ground, with problems getting humanitarian aid in, is it still a recipe for continued disaster?

AMBASSADOR COHEN

It will be very fragile. But as the UN keeps increasing its troop presence throughout the country, it will stabilize. But one thing that's extremely important, they must put civil servants in there from the UN, because they have no institutions, they have no capacity to run the country. They have a very good number of nice Liberians out there, some living in the United States, who are willing to go there and run government departments, but they don't have a clue. You need several hundred UN civil servants to come in and help them through two or three years, until they rebuild the institutions.

MR. BORGIDA

And that would likely be a dangerous situation for them. Well, a tough situation in Liberia, as the Ambassador has pointed out. Ambassador Herman Cohen, who has been with us in the past, thanks so much for your views on Liberia and the state of play there. We appreciate it.

AMBASSADOR COHEN

My pleasure.

(End of interview.)

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