Liberian Foes Agree to Meet

MONROVIA, Liberia--Liberia's rival rebel factions and a representative of President Samuel K. Doe have agreed to meet to try to bring an end to the West African nation's bloody civil war, sources said yesterday.

Government sources in Gambia's capital of Banjul said a meeting was being arranged between both rebel factions and a Doe envoy.

The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Prince Johnson and rival rebel leader Charles Taylor were expected to attend talks Monday in Banjul.

Word of that meeting could lead to further delays in the deployment of a West African force charged with halting the fighting.

Nigerian and Guinean troops are mobilizing in Freetown, Sierra Leone, with soldiers from Gambia, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Togo forming a force to exceed 2500 men.

The United States says it will not intervene militarily to end the conflict in Liberia.

In Washington, Defense Department spokesperson Pete Williams said the Liberian capital of Monrovia was relatively quiet yesterday.

"There are reports of isolated fire, but no apparent combat," he said.

He said the U.S. Embassy was being guarded by 66 Marines, down from 225 earlier in the week when street battles raged around the diplomatic compounds.

Williams said about 344 Indian nationals were evacuated from the U.S. Embassy Compound yesterday and brought to the USS Saipan before departing for Freetown.

The Marines had previously evacuated 334 people, including 62 U.S. government workers and 49 private U.S. citizens, he said. The rest of them were foreign nationals.

Taylor's rebels had evacuated most foreigners--but not scores of Guineans and Nigerians--from Monrovia's battlefront in an 18-vehicle convoy on Wednesday. Guinea and Nigeria are participating in the West African peacekeeping force.

A leading Nigerian newspaper, the Guardian, reported yesterday morning that Taylor's rebels shot two Nigerian citizens to death inside their Monrovia embassy during the past week. The report was certain to step up pressure on Nigeria's military government to speed up intervention.