| Greetings in Jesus Name! Just
to update you on recent developments in Liberia. So far we think
things are progressing orderly and timely except for the delay
in the assessment visits of the Joint Verification Team [who
should establish frontlines] and Military Observers [who should
monitor ceasefire adherence/violations ahead of deployment of
the peacekeepers]. We pray this is expedited.
But the US Security Assessment team has been in country and
making a lot of impression of the local people. It started off
without contact with local authorities but later made contact
with people at Defense and they've go around fairly well to
the admiration of ordinary Liberians.
We are also excited that the church leaders proposal to US
Ambassador John Blaney last Saturday [July 5] to encourage the
US to deploy the West African portion of the peacekeepers to
accelerate the departure of President Taylor in order to ensure
a smooth political transition is gaining some grounds. ECOWAS
has agreed to deploy within two weeks a 1000 soldiers to immediately
secure Monrovia. Thank God!
We at CCC are continuing to work with more than one thousand
new victims of rape and other forms of abuse at the main stadium
in Monrovia where more than fifty thousand displaced persons
are reported to shelter. That is in addition to our running
programs in Totota/Maimu, Central Liberia. We also still manage
the Seigbeh IDP Camp where a considerable number of the IDPs
were cut off by recent fighting which the Church World Service
has lifted in their recent update.
With the local ACT network, ACT CO in Geneva has approved the
amount of $50,000 to address immediate food, clothing and medical
needs of IDPs sheltering in churches around Monrovia.
I think it's appropriate and possible for PDA to field an immediate
assessment of the situation in Liberia to determine how helpful
she could be to her partners attending to this daring humanitarian
emergency in Liberia. Ghana airways still flies out of Robertsfield
and we expect a 20' container from CWS in port by July 19th.
We have been in contact with the church leaders who are visiting
Abuja, Nigeria. They have had very fruitful meetings with the
Christian Association of Nigeria. The challenge is to help them
arrange a brief with President Bush when he arrives in Nigeria
in they they have asked me to send them letterheads from LCC
and LFJ, which we have already done.
thanks for all the support and God bless
Very truly yours,
Reverend Brown |
