
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, June 10, 1990                   TAG: 9006100049
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MONROVIA, LIBERIA                                LENGTH: Medium

LIBERIAN PEACE TALKS SCHEDULED

The government and the rebels who have been closing in on the capital have agreed to peace talks mediated by the Liberian Council of Churches.

The church council also has asked the United States to send troops to Liberia as a peace-keeping force, council President Levee Moulton said.

The rebels, led by former bureaucrat Charles Taylor, had consistently refused to negotiate unless President Samuel Doe leaves Liberia. But rebel spokesman Eric Dukaleu said in a telephone interview late Saturday from the Ivory Coast city of Man, near the Liberian border, that the rebels would attend the talks.

A government source, who declined to be identified further, said the talks will begin Monday at the U.S. Embassy in Freetown in neighboring Sierra Leone. Government radio confirmed Doe had agreed to send a delegation.

A statement by the church council did not mention the cease-fire it has been calling for in the 5-month-old tribal war that has killed more than 1,000 people, mostly civilians.

No major fighting had been reported since Friday, when the government recaptured a rubber plantation 25 miles southwest of the capital. But the rebels maintained control of most of this Ohio-sized nation of 2.5 million.

The rebels accuse Doe's administration of corruption, economic mismanagement and human rights abuses. Doe seized power in a bloody coup in 1980.

A U.S.-arranged evacuation of Americans and other expatriates was scheduled today. An Air Guinea Boeing 737 was to make three trips from Monrovia to Abidjan, capital of neighboring Ivory Coast.

Embassy officials said it appeared most of the nearly 1,500 Americans estimated to be in Liberia planned to stay. U.S. and British naval ships remained off the Liberian coast in case hostilities reached the capital and an emergency evacuation was necessary.

Doe last week agreed to let Liberian religious leaders mediate the conflict.

Moulton said the United States has been relaying messages between the church group and Taylor, who was educated in the United States.

by CNB