Warlord's wife to push him aside, claim rebel leadership

MONROVIA, Liberia - The wife of the leader of Liberia's most powerful rebel movement announced Tuesday that she was taking charge, backed by dozens of guerrilla commanders in ousting a husband whose ambitions she said were endangering the nation's hard-won peace.

In a family feud with West Africa's stability in the balance, warlord Sekou Conneh took to state radio to insist it was only a marital squabble and he was still in command.

But Asha Keita-Conneh declared she was the "double boss," of her husband and the movement.

"I put him there. If you open a big business and you put your husband in charge, if you see that things are not going the right way, you set him aside, and straighten things up," Keita-Conneh told the Associated Press, as her baby daughter lay beside her on a bed in the family home.

Keita-Conneh promised she would put Liberia's 6-month-old peace process on track. "I will never agree for anybody to fight in this country again," she said.

Around her, fighters of the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy movement nodded assent. Dignitaries streamed in for consultations.

Unless rapidly resolved, the dispute threatens to destabilize Liberia, where a U.N. force of 15,000 is backing a power-sharing government after 14 years of civil war that killed a quarter-million people.

Peace came to Liberia in August, when President Charles Taylor fled into exile as the rebels laid siege to his capital and international peacekeepers moved in.

The risk is that a lasting rift between loyalists of rebel husband and rebel wife could revive factional fighting.

Keita-Conneh's claim to control had a measure of credibility, despite the rarity of a woman leading an armed guerrilla movement with thousands of fighters.

She has long been seen as a power behind the rebel movement, with her influence coming from her alleged position as spiritual adviser to President Lansana Conte of neighboring Guinea.

Keita-Conneh is widely said to have won the Guinea leader's loyalty with her correct prediction of a 1996 mutiny against Conte, which he withstood. In gratitude, the Guinean president made her his adopted daughter.

Later, Conte is alleged to have funded and armed the LURD uprising in anger at Taylor's armed incursions into Guinea.

When the group launched its insurgency in 1999, Keita-Conneh's husband, a little-known former used-car salesman, emerged as the movement's leader.

Conte's regime denies backing LURD, and Conneh denies his wife is Conte's medium.

The peace process has not run smoothly under Conneh's LURD. LURD was the last of Liberia's armed factions to allow U.N. forces in a stronghold town.

In recent days, a number of top rebel officials broke with Conneh, circulating a statement declaring his wife was their new leader.

It was unclear Tuesday who held greater support among the rebels.

"I am chairman, even if there was a problem between me and my wife, it has been resolved and I am the chairman," Conneh said.

"I see myself as a mother, a mother of all the factions," Keita-Conneh said. "Believe me, if I tell the children to bring in their arms, they will bring all, and I will turn them in."

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times 490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 Contact the Times | Privacy Policy Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright