Liberia leader 'should step down'

The head of the United Nations refugee agency, Ruud Lubbers, has ended a tour of West Africa by appealing for the Liberian leader, Charles Taylor, to step down.

In what correspondents describe as unusually blunt remarks, Mr Lubbers said the Liberian president was the source and very embodiment of the region's problems.

He said the cycles of ethnic violence in Western Africa would not stop until a UN peacekeeping force was sent to Liberia.

The UN has already applied sanctions to Charles Taylor's administration for human rights abuses, gun running and other trafficking with militias in Guinea, Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone.

Mr Lubbers also said the United States had a particular responsibility towards Liberia since the country was founded by freed North American slaves who had returned to Africa.

Meanwhile, reports from north-eastern Liberia say heavy cross-border firing has broken out between Liberian and Guinean forces.

Witnesses in the border town of Ganta said Guinean troops were fighting alongside rebels of the group Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd).

Casualties are reported on both sides of the border.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service