Excerpts from the Press Briefing July 29, 2003

QUESTION: Richard, have you seen the story that President Taylor is reconsidering his pledge to surrender power?

MR. BOUCHER: No, I haven't seen that story. I don't know what the sourcing or what the quotes might be but --

QUESTION: His spokesman, so it must be accurate. 

MR. BOUCHER: You never quite know with spokesmen.

Certainly, we have made clear that he needs to leave, the President has made clear he needs to leave, and that that departure needs to be coincident with the arrival of peacekeepers.

We're moving forward on the issue of peacekeepers working with the West Africans. We will support their deployments. They have increasingly concrete plans for going to Liberia. There is a meeting at the heads of state level that they have planned now for tomorrow in Accra, and we'll be, expect to be, represented there as well -- not at the head of state level. So the plans are moving forward for peacekeeping.

We're also discussing with other members of the Security Council a resolution that would authorize member-states to deploy troops to support a ceasefire in Liberia. And so that work continues as well.

So we would expect Charles Taylor to depart as an essential element in stabilizing the situation. He has made those commitments before. He has made those commitments publicly. He has made them to NGOs. He has made them to governments. And we would expect him to keep those commitments.

QUESTION: Can you fill us in on Mr. Kansteiner's movement?

MR. BOUCHER: Mr. Kansteiner is traveling to the region, as you know. I think he was in Paris -- I'm not sure, I think just changing planes -- and he is on his way to Guinea, will be in Guinea tomorrow.

QUESTION: In Guinea tomorrow?

MR. BOUCHER: Yeah.

QUESTION: Okay. And then after that?

QUESTION: You don't expect him to go to the Accra meeting?

MR. BOUCHER: He may go on to the Accra meeting, yeah. That's currently the plan, but it's not solid yet.

QUESTION: Some time ago, I think it was about eight days ago, Phil talked from the podium about your calling on neighboring states not to support any of the rebel groups, and in that he specifically mentioned Guinea. Is this part of what Mr. Kansteiner is going to be doing --

MR. BOUCHER: I expect he will take up the overall situation in the region, but also reaffirm our view that all neighboring states should take steps to make sure that there are no supplies or support reaching the rebels from neighboring countries. That's been a part of our diplomacy in a number of places, and I'm sure that Assistant Secretary Kansteiner will take that up in Guinea as well.

QUESTION: Do you have some -- do you have any evidence that there are supplies or anything going into Liberia?

MR. BOUCHER: I wouldn't be able to go into the information that we have about how the rebels get resupplied, so I'm just not in a position to share.

QUESTION: Well, is it fair to assume then, though, that you would not be calling on neighboring states, particularly Guinea, to not do any of this, and you wouldn't be doing that, unless you had reason to believe that they were?

MR. BOUCHER: Well, we have reason to believe that these rebels are getting their supplies from somewhere. They have guns, they have bullets, they have other weapons. These come from somewhere and they don't get it through the official channels. So that means they're coming from neighboring states, and so we need to talk to neighboring states to do everything they can to prevent that supply and support. That's as far as I can go into it.