UN praises progress in Liberia since end of civil wars

MONROVIA (AFP) - Liberia has made considerable progress in the years since back-to-back civil wars devastated the nation and killed about 250,000 people, a UN Security Council delegation said Sunday.

Liberia, an impoverished west African nation of about four million people, was founded by freed US slaves in the 19th century and rocked by internal wars between 1989 and 2003.

"It's quite evident that Liberia has made considerable progress since the end of the civil war," said US ambassador Susan Rice, who led the 15-member United Nations delegation to inspect the implementation of a peace-keeping mission in the country.

Still, Rice, who also met Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, said authorities needed to do more to provide for the country's security, as well as implement improved justice systems.

Liberia currently relies heavily on a UN mission force of 8,000 men to help maintain stability in the war-scarred nation.

The country's own army, built from scratch with US assistance after 2003, is not yet fully operational but Sirleaf has said she hopes Liberia can take charge of its own security within the next three years.

Security Council delegates later Sunday visited the town of Kortu, a few kilometres from Monrovia, where the UN's mission backs a project aimed at stopping female genital mutilations, which were once commonplace in the community.

The project, launched last year, offers alternative employment to 50 women who once made their livelihood by facilitating in female circumcisions.

"Practicing female circumcision is the only way we used to survive. But the skills that we are now acquiring will help us to become women on our own and we will longer depend on traditional practices," said 35-year-old Tenneh McCauley, who is enrolled in the programme.

Liberia's most recent civil war ended in 2003 when then-president Charles Taylor was forced to quit the country amid international pressure.

He was arrested in 2006 and found guilty last month by a UN-backed court in the Netherlands of arming and aiding murderous rebels in Sierra Leone who paid Taylor with slave-mined blood diamonds.