Bush may refuse to meet Nigerian president [View All]

[MaineDem]

WASHINGTON --The White House suggested Tuesday that President Bush may refuse to meet with Nigerian President Olesegun Obasanjo this week without answers about the disappearance from Nigeria of Africa's most infamous warlord.

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor has been indicted by a U.N. tribunal on charges of committing crimes against humanity while in office, including aiding and directing a Sierra Leone rebel movement and trading guns and gems with the insurgents, among them child fighters who terrorized victims by chopping off their arms, legs, ears and lips.

Taylor also has been accused of starting civil war in Liberia and of harboring al-Qaida suicide bombers who attacked the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, killing 12 Americans and more than 200 Africans. Fighting ended in 2001 in Sierra Leone, and Obasanjo had offered Taylor refuge in Nigeria under an agreement that helped end Liberia's civil war in 2003.

Since then, though, the United States, the United Nations and others have called for Taylor to be handed over to an international war crimes tribunal.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/03/28/bush_may_refuse_to_meet_nigerian_president/?rss_id=Boston.com+%2F+News