Taylor To Resign Amid Fierce Fighting Spread..

"At 11.59 am Monday (August 11) I will step down and the new guy will be sworn in," Taylor said after meeting with envoys from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) who had come to Monrovia to tell him to resign and head into exile.

Taylor had also "reiterated his commitment to leave the country after formally handing over power," Ghana’s Foreign Minister Addo Akufo Addo, said after the meeting.

ECOWAS had insisted Taylor leave within three days of the arrival of the first troops. But the Ghanaian foreign minister seemed to have dropped that ultimatum, saying that the Liberian president has to be "congratulated" for agreeing to step down.

As Taylor made his statement, fierce fighting between rebels and government forces continued in Monrovia, as well as in Buchanan, the southeastern port and second city.

Nigeria, the region’s economic and military giant, offered Taylor asylum if he agreed to resign as president of a nation that has suffered more than a decade of recurring civil wars that have killed hundreds of thousands.

Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), the main rebel group, rose up against the warlord-turned-president nearly five years ago and now control four-fifths of the country. They have been besieging the capital for the last two months.

Government forces fought their way across two frontline bridges Saturday August 2 in what commanders said was an offensive aimed a recapturing the city’s rebel-held port.

Loyalist troops crossed the two key bridges, the site of a two-week standoff with the rebels, under a heavy barrage of rocket and mortar fire and entered Via Town, a city district separating central Monrovia from the port area.

More than 200,000 displaced people are living rough there amid a crippling shortage of food, water and medicines. Hundreds have died in the fighting.

Several houses could be seen burning in Via Town as the fighting raged. Government officers on the ground said the offensive was aimed at securing the port to allow the west African peacekeepers to bring in men and equipment.

The UNSC late Friday August 1 passed a U.S.-sponsored resolution supporting the deployment of the west African peacekeeping force, and announcing its replacement by a UN peacekeeping force by October 1.

As a former warlord, Taylor unleashed one of Africa’s most savage civil wars in 1989 against former president Samuel Doe, which lasted for six years and killed some 250,000 people.

Taylor is accused by a UN-backed court of backing rebels in Sierra Leona, who were notorious for recruiting child soldiers and hacking off people’s limbs in a war which raged from 1991 until January 2002 and claimed up to 200,000 lives.

A year after Taylor’s election in 1997 the LURD took up arms against him, plunging Liberia into war yet again.