Liberian President Charles Taylor is under pressure to go into exile today in the hope it might end a 14-year cycle of violence that has ruined his West African country.
US President George W. Bush said last night the United States was exploring options for ensuring peace and stability in Liberia. But he told former warlord Mr Taylor he would need to leave the country. Mr Bush makes his first visit to Africa next week.
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Liberian President Charles Taylor
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Officials in Washington said the Pentagon was looking at sending 2,000 troops to help stop fighting between Mr Taylor's forces and rebels. Diplomats say that would be difficult while Mr Taylor was in office, given a war crimes indictment against him.
UN diplomats in New York say that Mr Taylor has already rejected an offer of asylum from Nigeria, which has no law under which he could be extradited to face the war crimes court in Sierra Leone.
A United Nations Security Council mission in the region has said it does not believe anyone should receive impunity, but that it should be for West African leaders to make their own choices about what can bring peace.
Mr Taylor won elections in 1997 after emerging dominant from a war that cost 200,000 lives in the 1990s. His foes from that conflict started a new one to oust him three years ago and now control nearly two-thirds of the country.
Liberians have pleaded with the United States to send troops to help rescue them from a land that was once relatively prosperous, but now lies in ruins.
But US officials remember the humiliating US withdrawal from a humanitarian mission to Somalia in 1993 after 18 Americans were killed, and Liberia does not carry the same strategic importance as Iraq and Afghanistan.