WASHINGTON — President Bush sent a seven-member Marine Corps team into war-ravaged Liberia on Wednesday, a small deployment that symbolizes the narrowly defined role his administration envisions for U.S. troops in the African nation.
The team, the first U.S. troops to serve in support of a West African-led peace force in Liberia, arrived by helicopter in the capital, Monrovia, from Navy warships off the coast. If not for its security escort, the team could have fit in a single helicopter.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday August 08, 2003 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 69 words Type of Material: Correction
Liberian deployment -- In an Aug. 7 article in Section A on the deployment of U.S. Marines to Liberia, The Times inaccurately reported that several thousand troops from the Economic Community of West African States were in the country. In fact, as of Wednesday, 348 Nigerian troops were in the capital, Monrovia, members of an 880-member battalion that is expected to be fully deployed in Liberia by Aug. 17.
The military liaison team is not expected to expand much beyond 20 members, Pentagon officials said. The Marines join several dozen American troops who were sent to protect the U.S. Embassy in the capital amid some of the worst fighting in Liberia's 14-year civil war.
Bush, speaking to reporters in Crawford, Texas, said the troops were meant to help the West African force "go in and provide conditions for humanitarian relief to arrive, whether it be by sea or air."
Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who was at his side, said they still wanted Liberian President Charles Taylor to leave the country before any additional U.S. troops were committed.
Pentagon officials said no decision had been made on whether to send in more troops over time. But unless the security situation further deteriorates, defense officials said on condition of anonymity, U.S. forces would remain at or near their current number until U.N. peacekeeping troops arrive in October.
The administration's wariness on Liberia, despite weeks of prodding from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and others, stems in part from a military stretched thin with commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. The memory of a 1993 firefight in Somalia that left 18 U.S. troops dead has also remained fresh, serving as a reminder that the woes of lawless African nations are not easily or quickly resolved.
Critics of limited deployment have argued that the United States bears a responsibility to Liberia because of the nations' special relationship. Liberia was founded in the 19th century by freed American slaves.
The limited commitment, if it continues, would appear to mark a victory for the Pentagon over the State Department, whose managers have argued that sending a significant number of peacekeeping troops into Liberia would be a low-cost way of signaling U.S. concerns beyond the immediate interests of American defense policy.
